





f 






A TALLAHASSEE GIRL 


BY 


MAURICE THOMPSON 

AUTHOR OF “HIS SECOND CAMPAIGN,” 11 SONGS OF 
FAIR WEATHER,” ETC. 





1 

« 


SEVENTH EDITION 


BOSTON 

TICK NOR AND COMPANY 
2U Cremant Street 
1S88 


TZs 
7[Vi i* 

T 

7 


Copyright, 1881, 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 


All rights reserved. 


li-xchti ns®* 


ot Supre 

Aug. 


rrte. Covincil 

iO # 1940 


A.A.S. 



Press of 

S. J. PARKHILL & CO., 
Boston. 


nR ? Js +J 


I 


X. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 



CONTENTS. 


With Longing Eyes 

. . 

• 

PAGE 

5 

A Tallahassee Gentleman 

. 

• 

21 

A Tallahassee Girl 

. . 

• 

3 * 

A Sand-Lily .... 



40 

Inside the Pale 

. 

• 

53 

Some Apprehensions . 

. 

. 

63 

The Tomb of a Prince 

• 

• 

73 

Two Invitations . 

. . 

. 

83 

Sunrise on the Augustine Road 

• 

99 

A Lady in Brown and Gold 

. 

. 

108 

In the Quail-Cover 

. 


119 

Cauthorne gets into Green Pasture 


131 

The Guitar .... 



151 

Col. Vance and Cauthorne 

ARGUE 

THE 


Question .... 

. 

. 

161 

A Sketch and a Fan . 

. 

• 

171 

The Two Gloomy Passengers 

. 

• 

181 

In Willard’s Absence . 

. . 

• 

190 

A Picnic on Lake Bradford 

• 

. 

209 

A Raid of Blondes 

. 


225 

Thou art the Man . 

. 

. 

241 

In the Old Room again 

. 

. 

252 


4 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 

XXII. Sketches in Black and White . . 266 

XXIII. Vacillation 278 

XXIV. Good-By 289 

XXV. Mr. Jumas’s House 303 

XXVI. Lucie ....... 317 

XXVII. The Silver Bell 334 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


CHAPTER I. 

WITH LONGING EYES. 

HE city of Tallahassee is not very old. 



Its site was chosen by the territorial com- 
missioners in 1823. The Capitol, a stuccoed 
brick building fronting both east and west with 
a heavy-columned portico, was built some time 
after. In obedience to a social law of force 
in the South, a number of very wealthy and 
highly educated families drew together around 
this prospective urban centre ; and, at the time 
of the breaking-out of the war of the Rebellion, 
a little city had spread itself over the crown 
and down the embowered slopes of Capitol Hill, 
overlooking a region at once the most fertile, 
the most picturesque, and the most salubrious 


6 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


to be found south of the North Georgia moun- 
tains. 

Large plantations were opened, and the 
generous soil was tilled by swarms of colored 
slaves. Cotton-warehouses sprang up at every 
street-corner; and the snowy fleece from the 
chocolate-colored fields yielded fabulous for- 
tunes to planters and merchants, to professional 
men, and to brokers and bankers. Indeed, no 
region in the world was ever more blessed with 
the fruits of well-directed and highly remunera- 
tive labor. Tallahassee had become the centre 
of a social system as unique as it was attrac- 
tive. The homes of the city were mostly hum- 
ble enough, in point of architectural preten- 
sions ; but there was about them an amplitude 
and stateliness characteristic of owners whose 
hospitality was known everywhere, and whose 
haughty exclusiveness was proverbial. In other 
words, these homes were open at all times, 
and for any number of days, weeks, and even 
months, to those who belonged to “ good fami- 
lies,” or who came bearing the written approval 
of any member of a good family,” and to no 
others. Here Prince Murat and his charming 


WITH LONGING EYES. 


7 


wife had found congenial friends, and had made 
their little, unpretentious house the gathering- 
place for a coterie of brilliant and cultured 
men and women. In fact, there was a court- 
liness, an air of high breeding, nay, a some- 
thing closely approaching the manners and 
influence of hereditary nobility, which enclosed 
the region known as the Tallahassee country, 
as with an atmosphere of its own, into which 
all the peculiarities of the highest social life in 
the slaveholding States had been condensed 
with an intensification corresponding to the 
compression. 

When the war came, it did not reach Talla- 
hassee. Atlanta, Nashville, Savannah, Augusta, 
Charleston, Richmond, each a social and com- 
mercial centre peculiarly Southern, fell in the 
way of armies, and lay at the mercy of a trium- 
phant soldiery ; but the fair queen of Florida, 
beautiful, embowered, aristocratic Tallahassee, 
escaped such a fate. x When the blare and 
thunder and crash of those four cataclysmal 
years had sunk into silence, she sat upon her 
high green hill, wrapped in her mantle of 
orange, fig, and live-oak trees, without a scar 


8 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


or a hurt visible. Her occupation was gone, 
however; and she folded her hands, and sat 
there quite silent, but unchanged. Her peas- 
antry, the negroes and the Crackers, took pos- 
session of the vast plantations ; and, under a 
system of tenantry ruinous to landlords and 
starving to laborers, began to enervate the 
famous chocolate fields by an exhausting sys- 
tem of tillage and utter neglect of fertilization. 

Along with the new order of things came 
great political excitement, which in the black 
belt, as middle Florida was called, culminated 
in many a thrilling coup and lawless adventure 
in the field of partisan strife. The capital was 
the scene of the memorable “count” so disas- 
trous to one party, so valuable to the other, and 
withal so disreputable to both. 

Adventurers from all quarters of the United 
States, and especially from the East, hurried ta 
Tallahassee with a view to riding into office 
upon the votes of the poor, ignorant, and 
kindly-natured freedmen. 

Agriculture was almost wholly neglected by 
the educated inhabitants ; and the depression of 
poverty was shown in their faces, their scant 


WITH LONGING EYES. 


9 


clothing, and their dilapidated carriages. Their 
fences were broken, their houses needed paint. 
The galling dilemma was offered them of choos- 
ing between manual labor and seedy, thrift- 
less poverty. They refused to choose. They 
hoped to find some royal way out of the 
trouble. 

Of course a re-action came ; and many men 
who lately had been planter-princes, with hun- 
dreds of slaves and broad estates at command, 
turned themselves to petty merchandising or 
dickering in real estate. Some sold their 
plantations out in parcels, and with the money 
received therefor began banking and curbstone 
broking in a small way. Others started orange 
nurseries ; and yet others went away to the 
West, hoping to regain their fortunes on the 
plains of Texas or in the mines of Colorado. 
Very many, however, clung to the old order of 
things. In fact, it may be said that Tallahassee 
held itself, as a community, aloof from any 
change. It was the one city of the South 
which stood as a perfect monument of the 
lordly days when Cotton was king. 

Lawrence Cauthorne went to Tallahassee as 


10 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


the representative of an enterprising New York 
newspaper. He reached that dreamy city late 
in November, and immediately attracted at- 
tention on account of his striking personal 
appearance. He was tall, square-shouldered, 
heavy-limbed. His head was large, his hair 
and mustache flaxen white, just touched with 
yellow, his eyes and skin very dark. Quiet, 
almost silent, he began to go about the streets, 
with his hat drawn low over his forehead, and 
carrying in his left hand a heavy cane. He 
had taken comfortable apartments on the 
ground floor of the City Hotel, — the first two 
rooms to the left as you enter the main hall 
from the street veranda. This City Hotel is 
a picturesque old building, — a real ancient inn, 
— with long piazzas, and a peaked roof, broken 
up into queer little dormer windows. It is 
partly brick and partly frame, the latter very 
rickety, and runs in an ell shape along two 
broad streets, its main entrance facing the 
Capitol grounds. From its upper windows you 
may have a bird’s-eye view of a wide stretch of 
surrounding country, beautifully rolling, forests 
and fields alternating, — a genuinely Piedmont- 


WITH LONGING EYES. II 

ese landscape, the like of which cannot be found 
otherwhere in America. Here and there, half 
hidden in their unkempt orchards, the still 
stately but rapidly decaying old country man- 
sions may be seen ; their weather-beaten chim- 
neys and dilapidated porches pathetically sug- 
gesting the glory of the past. 

Cauthorne had left some years behind him 
the romance period of his life. A man of 
thirty-eight, who has fought through the war 
of the Rebellion, who has experienced the 
terrors of Andersonville, who has been a war 
correspondent through the Franco-Prussian 
war, and has filled a like place in the late 
Russo-Turkish struggle, who has been often 
and desperately wounded, and who has recently 
published a quite successful and very brilliant 
novel, is not likely to lose much time in idle 
dreaming. Nevertheless, he found something 
in quiet, exclusive, sunshiny old Tallahassee 
and its bowery environs which brought back 
to him, as if on the wings of those balmy 
breezes, snatches of his old boyish sentiments. 
He wrote two or three little poems, so fresh 
and warm, so full of the tenderness and 


12 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


strength of youth, that they were copied 
everywhere. Coming with no letters which 
could open the tightly-closed door of Talla- 
hassee social life to him, Cauthorne found 
little to break the pleasing monotony of his 
daily round of lonely rambles and professional 
writing, until the coming-together of the Florida 
Legislature, which filled the old inn to over- 
flowing with a chattering, drinking, rollicking, 
intriguing crowd of men, who turned the quiet 
of the place into a roar of voices. His especial 
duty led him at once into close companionship 
with some of the leaders of this body. But his 
interest in political affairs did not interfere with 
his study of the social problem constantly thrust 
before him. He would have given a great deal 
for some means of throwing himself, for a time, 
into the midst of certain staid and aristocratic 
families. He knew their houses ; he even 
knew their names, and the acreage of their 
plantations ; nay, he had possessed himself 
of their antebellum history, their goings and 
comings, their princely extravagances, and 
profuse hospitalities. And now he desired 
nothing so much as an opportunity to study 


WITH LONGING EYES. 


13 


this present transition phase of the most 
ultra and most cultured circle of old Southern 
families. What a charming novel he could 
make out of such materials as the study 
would furnish ! 

Late one afternoon, as he sat in a roomy 
chair, leaning easily back against the brick 
wall of the inn, under the overhanging roof 
of the colonnade, a carriage driven by a well- 
dressed colored man rolled slowly past. The 
top of the vehicle was thrown back, so that he 
had a good view of the inmates, — a gray- 
haired, white-bearded, slender old gentleman ; 
a rather stout but prepossessing woman, who, 
by her face and a general likeness, was evi- 
dently the gentleman’s sister ; and a tall, beau- 
tiful girl, no doubt his daughter. Something 
almost pathetic in the threadbare cleanness of 
the man’s attire, the faded cushions and cur- 
tains of the carriage, and the tattered trappings 
of the horses, contrasted oddly with the taste- 
ful simpleness and newness of the girl’s clothes, 
I which, although made of cheap materials, were 
certainly in the very latest and most becoming 
fashion, as to shape and trimmings. 


14 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Cauthorne turned to the hotel-clerk, who 
chanced to be standing near, and who knew 
all about everybody in Tallahassee. “Who 
are they, Philips ? ” he inquired. 

“That is Judge La Rue’s family carriage, 
sir,” replied Philips. 

“ I asked you about the persons in the car- 
riage, and not about the ownership of the vehi- 
cle,” dryly replied Cauthorne. 

“ Oh, yes, sir ! beg pardon, sir : that is Judge 
La Rue and his family, sir.” 

“ Where do they live ? ” 

“At the north end of town, sir, — the old 
place in the grove where the Thomasville road 
comes in. A fine old place, sir, but going 
down : needs repairs.” 

“ I have noticed that place,” said Cauthorne. 
“It is a large house, far back in a tangled 
woody enclosure, with a rotten board fence 
around it.” 

“That’s it, sir; and it was a place once to 
do one’s eyes good. Judge La Rue used to 
live like a lord. He had his hundreds of ne- 
groes, and a half-dozen plantations. He used 
to spend his fifty thousand summering in the 


WITH LONGING EYES. 


IS 


North every year. But his day is over. Takes 
his best licks to keep soul and body together 
now.” 

Cauthorne’s eyes followed the slowly trun- 
dling carriage until it passed from sight around 
a corner among some giant live-oaks ; then — 

“She must have been young in the war- 
time,” he said. 

“The young lady, do you mean ? ” demanded 
Philips. 

“Yes.” 

“ Oh ! she was a baby, you might say, a 
little toddling thing, when I volunteered. I 
remember seeing her in her nurse’s arms. 
She’s handsome, don’t you think?” 

Cauthorne’s sense of propriety revolted at 
this point. He could not afford to discuss 
the young lady’s personal appearance with the 
inn-clerk. So he rose, and went for a stroll in 
the upper streets of the city. 

As he passed along the clean sidewalks, be- 
neath the thick arch of the trees which line 
those broad, beautiful avenues, a number of 
carriages, not unlike the one we have described, 
went by. He glanced into each one to see if 


1 6 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

the tall girl was there. He very much wished 
to look at her again. 

It easily fitted his mood to take the La Rue 
grounds within the circuit of his walk, and he 
was doubly repaid for his extended tramp by 
meeting the carriage at the rickety entrance- 
gate. Mis-s La Rue was not merely beautiful : 
she was lovely, she was sweet-faced and ten- 
der-eyed, healthy, a girl just going into strong 
young-womanhood. Cauthorne with one swift 
glance fixed her face and form forever in his 
memory. It was his strongest habit, this stor- 
ing away for future use the forms, faces, and 
dress of such striking persons as chance threw 
in his way. But Miss La Rue made more 
than a passing impression on his mind. She 
seemed to him a type of a most interesting 
phase of Southern life ; and this impression 
grew apace as the days went by. He saw her 
frequently, sometimes walking, sometimes rid- 
ing a very round and evidently very old pony, 
sometimes at the Methodist church on Sun- 
days, always well dressed, always bright and 
sweet, always more interesting than before. 
One morning he saw her standing in the gar- 


WITH LONGING EYES. 


17 


den at La Rue place, beside a huge banana- 
stalk. She had red flowers in her black hair, 
and at her throat. Her dark face and gentle 
gray eyes were turned suddenly upon him. 
He felt a thrill go through him. To his amaze- 
ment she inclined her head, recognizing him 
with a smile and a movement of the lips. He 
lifted his hat, and bowed, half pausing where 
he was. Instantly a change flashed into the 
girl’s face. She blushed in confusion, and 
turned away. Cauthorne walked on. The 
next moment he did a most unjustifiable thing ; 
but it must be said in mitigation of his offence, 
that he did it involuntarily in the heat of 
sudden emotion. He turned and looked back, 
just in time to see Miss La Rue bringing a 
pair of eye-glasses to bear upon him. These 
she let fall instantly, and almost ran out of the 
garden. 

Cauthorne understood the situation at once. 
Miss La Rue was near-sighted ; and at first, not 
having on her glasses, had mistaken him for 
an acquaintance. A very natural blunder, and 
a harmless one. But if he had known, that, 
on account of the whiteness of his hair and 


1 8 A TALLAHASSEE VIRL 

mustache, she had thought him a very old 
friend of her father, he might not have laughed 
so complacently as he pursued his walk. 

After this some days passed before he again 
saw the young lady ; but it was no fault of his 
that he did not meet her several times. In 
fact, he tried very hard. Not that he dreamed 
of any tender passion likely to be fanned to 
flame by further exchange of glances ; but she 
was a revelation to him, or rather she seemed 
capable of becoming one. As for possible 
love-making, it did not enter his thoughts. 
His calculations were all based on the some- 
what sordid premises of literary utility. In 
other words, he thought he should like to put 
Miss La Rue into his novel. But how was he 
ever to know her ? How could the barrier be 
broken down ? 

It was Cauthorne’s way to brood over a 
question until some answer was found ; but in 
the present instance there seemed no proba- 
bility that any amount of brooding or philos- 
ophizing would serve his turn; for what is 
more unassailable than the social laws of a 
small, isolated, conservative city ? 


WITH LONGING EYES . 


19 


However, notwithstanding the great likeli- 
hood of his never being able even to speak to 
her, he almost doggedly sought in every direc- 
tion for means of approaching her. One day 
he made sure he should at least succeed in 
rendering her a service which would entitle 
him to some pleasant consideration. He met 
her pony in a road just out of town, leisurely 
making its way homeward, with a lady’s saddle 
empty on its back. He took the bridle, and 
led the docile creature back along the way it 
had come, until he found Miss La Rue just 
emerging from a little wood, where she had 
been gathering some fringes of Spanish moss, 
which she bore in her hands. 

“ He was running away from you, I believe,” 
he said, bowing gravely, and offering her the 
reins of the bridle. 

“Thank you, sir,” she said. He was not 
sure that she so much as glanced at him. He 
fancied, however, that her cheeks flushed 
warmly. There was no room for another word. 
She led the pony straightway to a bank by the 
wayside, whence she mounted, and rode home- 
ward. 


20 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Cauthorne could not resist the temptation 
to gaze after the gracefully swaying form of 
the girl, as the pony cantered off. She was 
very pleasingly dressed ; and there was a fresh- 
ness, so to speak, in her outline, like the fresh- 
ness of a young rose-tree. A fragrance seemed 
to linger in the air round about where she had 
stood. Cauthorne was vexed. He could not 
brook this delay, this ever-present smack of 
defeat. It was a strong fence, but the pasture 
was incomparably tender and tempting. Could 
he ever climb over ? 


A TALLAHASSEE GENTLEMAN. 21 


CHAPTER II, 


A TALLAHASSEE GENTLEMAN. 



AUTHORNE was invited, in acknowi- 


edgment of his importance as an attach 6 
of a great newspaper of New York, to attend 
an evening session of a select informal caucus 
held by certain white members of the Florida 
Senate in the parlors of the inn. It was there 
that he was formally introduced, in a business 
way, to Mr. Arthur Vance, son of an ex-gov- 
ernor of thfe State. This young man was a 
tall, sallow, slender, albeit rather handsome 
fellow, near Cauthorne’s age. He was a leader 
in State politics among the younger class of 
politicians, but inclined to a certain liberality 
in his views not quite tasteful to a few of the 
older heads. He had been a gallant soldier 
on the Southern side of the war, and, though 
tinctured somewhat with the too haughty spirit 


22 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


of his ancestry, was scrupulously polite and 
gentle in his manners. He had snapped off 
the thread of his education at Heidelberg, 
when the war broke out, to hasten home, and 
do battle for the “ peculiar institution ” and the 
doctrines of his section. He served under 
Stonewall Jackson, receiving many wounds, 
honorable mention, promotion, and all the best 
rewards of a brave and intrepid soldier. It is 
not strange that Cauthorne was favorably im- 
pressed with the Southerner’s courteous suavi- 
ty and sincerity of manner ; nor is it to be 
wondered at that it chafed him sorely to feel 
that this very courtesy and suavity guarded 
the portal to intimate friendship, or even gen- 
eral social intercourse, as by the interposition 
of a polished coat-of-mail. It was a novel 
experience, this feeling himself shut out of 
every social avenue. Not only were the homes 
barred against him, but the bosoms of even 
the men whom he met every day. And yet he 
could not complain of any unfair treatment. 
He was ready to admit that he had ne right to 
expect any thing better than mere civility from 
these people, to whom at best he was merely 


A TALLAHASSEE GENTLEMAN. 


23 


a newspaper emissary, who might be expected 
to exaggerate their faults, and scarcely notice 
their virtues, as correspondents are so apt 
to do. 

Cauthorne made a study of Vance, rightly 
taking him as an excellent example of the 
younger Southern men of education and social 
mark left over from the war ; a class of men a 
little inclined to give an insult on. slight provo- 
cation, and wholly disinclined to receive one 
without fighting ; but true as steel to a friend, 
punctilious in matters conventional, and beau- 
tifully tender and courtly in their intercourse 
with women, — a class, to say the truth, with 
as few faults and as high qualities as are the 
birthright of any other in the world. 

During the course of the caucus it became 
necessary for Cauthorne and Vance to quite 
frequently interchange words ; and it chanced 
that they invariably agreed upon matters of 
local State policy, whilst radically differing in 
their views upon national questions. At one 
time Vance said, — 

“ I think this question of the negro and his 
future depends almost wholly upon the sort of 


24 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


education he is to receive. At present it will 
not do to pass the government of the State and 
its counties into his hands. He cannot read or 
write ; he knows not the first rule of economy ; 
he is, in fact, ineligible to rule even his own 
cabin. Of course I admit his right to vote and 
to hold office, but ” — 

“Well, I don’t admit any thing of the sort,” 
growlingly interrupted a square-mouthed, elder- 
ly man, with a dark cigar clamped in his teeth. 
“Whenever you admit so much as that, away 
go all the hopes of the South.” 

“ No, you are wrong,” replied Vance. “ My 
theory is this : keep the negroes out of office 
until you have educated them. Build up 
schools for their children, encourage political 
study among them, and the next generation 
will show more fitness for public trust. What 
' do you think, sir ? ” turning to Cauthorne, who 
had silently stood near. 

“ The negroes seem to vastly outnumber you 
here: how will you keep them out of office 
while their education is progressing ? ” Cau- 
thorne asked. 

“ There are thousands of ways,” suggested 


A TALLAHASSEE GENTLEMAN. 


2 5 


the square-mouthed man. “They’re mighty 
timid creatures.” 

“The question is a difficult one, I admit,” 
said Vance, addressing Cauthorne, and giving 
no notice to the other. “ I have puzzled my 
mind a good deal with it of late. The negro 
must be educated. That is fundamental. He 
must be absorbed, lost by education until he is 
no longer a negro, until he is not even a sepa- 
rate element in politics. I take it that the war 
has made us a nation, and it remains for us to 
make ourselves a people as well.” 

At this point some question was put to the 
body of the caucus, and the thread of the talk 
was broken. Soon after the meeting came to 
an end. Cauthorne did not go immediately to 
his room, but lighted a cigar, and walked a 
while on the long veranda. Vance had im- 
pressed him deeply and somewhat strangely, 
with his dark, swarthy, magnetic face, his pecu- 
liarly dignified manners, his voice, his sincerity, 
and, most of all, with his advanced political 
notions as compared with the current drift of 
Southern doctrines. There can be no doubt 
that a reflection from the grand old days of 


26 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


slavery had helped to accentuate and emphasize 
Vance’s characteristics in Cauthorne’s eyes. 
No strong imagination can fail to be affected 
by such a reflex, when placed in a focus of past 
glory like Tallahassee. 

Cauthorne, walking there in the balmy night 
air, with the moon’s rays pouring slantwise 
upon him from a point above the roof of the 
Capitol building, tried to conjure up the old 
time, when all these black folk who now saun- 
tered and shambled to and fro in the streets 
and alleys, or snoozed and nodded in the 
cabins, were slaves, mere cattle, to be ordered 
here and there, to be bought and sold. He 
thought how gay the winters must have been 
in Tallahassee when the Northern friends of 
these lordlike slaveholders came down to bask 
in the balmy Floridian weather, and to drink 
the wine and feast on the viands of those 
homes, famous for unequalled hospitality. Yon- 
der stands an old dilapidated mansion, whose 
windows are curtainless and shutterless, whose 
chimeys are crumbling, whose roof is battered, 
whose stuccoed walls are sadly colored and 
defaced. A few years ago, say twenty, that 


A TALLAHASSEE GENTLEMAN. 


27 


was a home where luxury reigned, and where 
distinguished men and women met in a way to 
charm the fancy of a poet or a painter. Men 
whose fame was world-wide came to that house, 
— politicians, artists, philosophers, novelists, 
actors. And the dignified youths and stately 
maidens went riding, driving, and walking, 
among the beautiful groves, or in happy com- 
panies sought Lake Jackson, or Lake Bradford, 
for a sail or a row on those silvery waters. 

The question arose in Cauthorne’s mind, 
how Mr. Arthur Vance, remembering the old 
time, and experiencing the new, with a full 
knowledge of all that lay between, could utter 
sentiments so liberal, so antagonistic to the 
whole spirit of his fathers. Not many men of 
the South, not another in Tallahassee, born 
and reared a Southerner, had at that time 
dared to go so far. He might safely be taken 
as the hero of a novel which should have for 
its purpose the portraying of Southern social 
life in this transition period. 

And so it will be seen how it chanced that 
at last Cauthorne’s fancy wove the web of a 
romance whose central figures were Arthur 


28 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


Vance and Lucie La Rue. But as a novelist, 
he was far too practical to depend much upon 
his fancy. The bricks of genius are not made 
without straw ; but how in this case could the 
straw be gathered ? Cauthorne always came 
round to the same point, where he stood 
with his eyes fixed upon the door opening upon 
the social life of Tallahassee : and he always 
stopped there ; for upon that door was written, 
“No admittance without the password.” 

He often met Arthur Vance in the street, 
where they bowed, and passed each other by ; 
and his eyes were now and then blessed with 
seeing Miss La Rue at church or in her father’s 
carriage : but the days might have been months 
and the weeks years without bringing him any 
nearer to them. Meantime he was absorbing 
the local spirit, and fastening in his memory 
forever the dreamy coloring of those sunny, 
breezy, perfumed landscapes, those prematurely 
old houses, and all tre accidents and eccen- 
tricities of the climate and people as he might 
see them. He wrote chapter after chapter 
of his novel, infusing into them a rare fresh- 
ness and a unique coloring ; but it was a con* 


A TALLAHASSEE GENTLEMAN. 


2 9 


stant sting to his pride, and an actual pang 
to his artistic consciousness, whenever he 
thought how little he was allowed to know 
of the social and inner lives of the persons 
he had chosen as models for his leading char 
acters. Some painters make up their com 
positions from the pictures of others ; but the 
insincerity of the thing must be a very great 
load to them. 

So the time slipped by into midwinter, and 
on toward the beginning of a very early Flo- 
ridian spring. The well-kept Capitol grounds 
were snowy with tall lilies, and fleecy with 
the sprays of the bridal-wreath shrubs. The 
live-oaks put forth their tassels, and the dusky 
fig-orchards took on a tinge of tender green. 
The winds from the Gulf had in them the 
sweetest tropical languors. 

Cauthorne’s mission seemed near its end. 
He was beginning to count the days as they 
led him to the time for his northward flight. 
He could not have the excuse of ill health with 
which to urge a stay after the adjournment of 
the legislature, which would be early in March. 
He never had been so strong physically, or so 


30 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


energetic mentally. He had heard much of 
the enervating influence of the Floridian cli- 
mate, but he felt in himself the opposite effect. 
Life seemed to have caught some new and 
valuable element from the golden sunlight, the 
rippling breezes, and the mingled perfumes. 
He tried to analyze his condition, but as often 
wandered away from the effort to think of 
Lucie La Rue. 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


31 


CHAPTER III. 

A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

HTHE village of Thomasville, the county- 
seat of Thomas County, Ga., lies white 
and clean, half-hidden*in its orchards of peach 
and pear trees, right in the heart of what ap- 
pears to be a limitless pine wood, but what is 
in reality the extreme southern fringe of that 
wood, where it breaks up into the brown, fer- 
tile billows of the Tallahassee country. A road 
leading from Thomasville to the Floridian cap- 
ital, and known as the Tallahassee road, lapses 
away like a snowy current, so white is the sand 
and so wavering the sunlight reflected from it, 
into the pine forest first, and next into the 
oak-clad hills beyond the Florida line. 

There is a really fine hotel in Thomasville, — 
a large, well-appointed brick structure, with 
modern improvements. It overtops the sur- 


32 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


rounding buildings, so that one standing on 
its iron balconies can look away beyond the 
clustered town-houses to those of the country, 
as they nestle in their embowering orchards of 
Le Conte pear-trees. 

On either side of the principal street of the 
town may be seen, here and there, pretty 
flower-gardens and clumps of Japan -plum 
bushes. A few orange - trees, some gnarled 
fig-trees, tall oaks, and spreading umbrella-trees 
shade the sandy lawns in front of the houses. 

Thomasville is a resort for invalids, — a win- 
ter resort for consumptives, and a summer 
resort for persons ill of rheumatism or general 
debility. Its air is singularly pure and bracing, 
always bearing a smell of fresh turpentine, 
that healing balsam of the pines, and always 
touched with the sharpness of the sea. Many 
persons going South by way of Montgomery 
find it convenient and pleasant to stop off for 
a day or two of rest at this charming Georgian 
village ; and it occasionally happens that some 
one, desirous of turning aside from that great 
stream of excursionists, tourists, health-seekers, 
pleasure seekers, and orange - maniacs, which 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


33 


pours through Live Oak and Lake City on to 
Jacksonville and up the St. Johns, is led to 
accept the offer of a day’s ride in a hack from 
Thomasville to Tallahassee. Whoever does 
this, does it with misgivings ; but he never 
regrets it. Without doubt it is the most 
delightful little journey to be had in the 
South. 

Herman Willard — a young artist, wealthy, 
happy, in love with his profession, and confi- 
dent of success whenever he should get ready 
to try for it, but at present not willing to try 
very hard — was in Thomasville when Feb- 
ruary was nearly ended. Here he was in- 
formed that the stage or hack route to Talla- 
hassee was but thirty-five miles, whilst the 
way by rail, going down to Live Oak, and 
doubling back to the first-named place, would 
be a whole night’s journey, with a very dis- 
agreeable change of cars. So he arranged to 
go in the hack, a sort of degenerate stage- 
coach, drawn by two horses and manned by 
a stalwart negro. This vehicle would set out 
on the following morning, so he found an after- 
noon of golden weather at his disposal. He 


34 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


resolved to make some sketches. It was while 
he stood on the sidewalk, rapidly pencilling the 
outlines of a low, broad-roofed cottage sunk 
deep among its trees, that a trivial thing hap- 
pened which he remembered with distinctness 
a year afterwards, and will so remember to his 
dying hour, whenever that may come. 

Two slender boys, students of the military 
academy hard by, stopped to look over his 
shoulders, as rude boys will. On the opposite 
sidewalk two ladies were passing, attended by 
a man on crutches. Of the former, one was 
an elderly woman ; the other a girl just round- 
ing into maturity, she might be twenty, tall, 
slender, dark, splendidly beautiful. The man, 
middle-aged, and of ordinary physique, had lost 
a leg. 

“ Who is that pretty girl, Tom ? ” said one 
of the boys to the other, in a low tone. 

The artist looked up ; and, as his eyes met 
those of the young lady, he fairly started, so 
surprised was he with her wonderful loveliness. 

“ That’s the Tallahassee girl,” responded the 
boy addressed as Tom. 

It seems that just then there was a little 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


35 


song, locally very popular, called “The Talla- 
hassee Girl.” Everybody in Thomasville was 
singing it. The music was of that happy, 
simple sort, which goes right to the popular 
sympathies. 

One of the boys sang a stanza in a low, 
sweet, half-childish voice, as the two sauntered 
on. The words, — 

“ Oh ! the Tallahassee girl is a charmer: 

She sings like a mocking-bird in May,” — 

with the snatch of melody in which they were 
set adrift, made a lodgement in Willard’s fancy. 
Of course the song had no connection with 
the young lady just passing, or with any other. 
It was as impersonal as any idle song could be. 
But the young man sent several swift glances 
after the lissome figure ; and those two verses 
of the ditty got tangled in the convolutions of 
his brain, and staid there. The receptivity of 
youth is as unreliable as it often is sensitive. 
To-day an impression is easily made : to-morrow 
every thing slips off the surface, leaving no 
trace. At one moment a tender voice and 
smiling lips will thrill every chord : the next, all 


36 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


beauty goes for nought as against the dog and 
gun, or the rod and reel. An indistinct dream 
in which some angel-like face floated will make 
a whole day sweet ; and anon the visions that 
remain distinctest after sleep will be those of 

grossest worldly ambition. 

# 

Just now Willard chanced to be in the mood 
for nursing gentle sentiments. The young 
lady left her photograph in his memory, and 
the air he breathed had in it for hours after- 
wards the sweetness of heliotrope. 

As he stood there with his sketch-book in 
his left hand, the pencil in his right, as if 
arrested midway of a stroke, his head turned 
so that his face looked over his right shoulder, 
his slender, almost slight, figure firmly erect, 
he would himself have been a fine study for an 
artist. 

All the rest of the afternoon, and through- 
out the evening, he was beset with such fancies 
as frame young faces in rose-mists, and build 
the airy castles of love-dreams. 

Ah, this Southern climate, this fervent day- 
time, this cool, fragrant night-time, this balmy 
air, this burden of the birds and the flowers! 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


37 


Surely Love walks here, with his quiver and 
his bow. 

Ranged around a circular gallery in the hotel, 
and next to the supper-room, a silver band dis- 
coursed music during the repast. To Willard 
it seemed beautifully significant that this or- 
chestra marched him to the table on the melo- 
dy of “The Tallahassee Girl.” It was, indeed, 
a true touch of the place and the time, deeply 
suggestive of the half-rude, half-cultured condi- 
tion of society in a village where the old South 
was rapidly giving place to the new. Nothing 
so certainly registers the changes of public 
feeling as the giving-up of the old sort of 
songs, and the taking-up of a new sort. Geor- 
gia was the first Southern State to throw aside 
“ Dixie,” and take up the later-day ballads : it 
was also the first Southern State to trade shot- 
guns for schoolhouses. That is to say, that, 
while other States were still shooting men down 
to the level of their ideas, Georgia had begun 
to educate them up to hers. She had quickly 
discerned that true statesmanship in any party, 
Democratic or Republican, is grounded in the 
educating of the masses, and not in leading 


38 


A TA LLA HA SSEE GIRL. 


their ignorance by appeals to their prejudices 
on one hand, or by whelming them with brute 
force on the other. She had begun to date 
her history from the close of the war, for- 
getting that Hamilton and Jefferson ever quar- 
relled, little heeding Jackson and Calhoun, but 
accepting the national promise in place of the 
State-rights theory ; burying the lost cause, 
and planting above it the flag of the Union. 
No such reflections as these conditions might 
suggest came into Willard’s mind. He hated 
politics. Beauty and pleasure in the lightest 
and leasKdidactic form filled the whole field of 
his vision. He was nothing if not, in the 
latest sense, an aesthete. 

That night a tall, dark girl, whose gray eyes 
were full of the wonder of a new passion, 
strayed back and forth through his dreams. 
Infinite distances of tropical landscape opened 
before him, unknown perfumes floated around 
him, and the breeze from distant gardens of 
bloom wafted to his ears again and again two 
or three turns of a sweet, simple tune. 

When he awoke the sunlight was flooding 
his room, and the driver of the so-called stage 


( 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


39 


was plaintively blowing his bugle in warning 
that he soon would be ready to go. 

Willard leaped from his bed, and, while he 
was hastily but scrupulously making his toilet, 
hummed the latest and most popular Thomas- 
ville air. 


40 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . . 


f 


CHAPTER IV. 

A SAND-LILY. 

ILLARD, with the distinct impression 



* * in his mind that the day’s journey 
would be a lonely one, filled his case with 
cigars, and his pockets with sketching-materi- 
als. He climbed into the coach ; the driver 
gave a ^ong, tremulous blast on his horn, 
whirled his whip with a sharp snap, and so the 
start was made. They were trundled eastward 
in a clean, broad street, whence they turned 
southward, and approached a well-kept house. 
The young man’s heart jumped into his throat 
as if in fierce despite of all his polished self- 
control ; for there at the lawn gate stood the 
girl and the crippled man, ready for travel. 
Evidently they had just said good-by to the 
middle-aged woman, who formed the least nota- 
ble angle of the group. The girl was nearest 
the road. 


A SAND -LILY. 


41 


“You must come soon, dear aunt,” she said, 
turning so that her exquisite profile was softly 
outlined against the scarlet fan interposed be* 
tween it and the sun, and addressing the othei 
woman. 

“Yes, child, before long. Good-by.” 

They clasped hands, and deftly kissed each 
other, as women do ; then there was a rustle at 
the coach’s side, a fluttering of scarlet ribbons, 
a hint of heliotrope, and the girl settled her- 
self in the seat in front of Willard. The lame 
man got to his place beside her with much 
difficulty. 

There was a touch of the old tirpe in the 
way they departed from Thomasville ; the horses 
prancing, the coach rattling, and the driver 
loudly blowing his far-sounding horn. They 
crossed the railway near a grimy depot, passed 
along by the drill-ground of the military school, 
saw some picturesque negro-cabins, with coal- 
black pickaninnies playing by the front doors ; 
and then they whirled into the pine wood, 
along a level white road, upon which the sand 
was fine and thick. On either hand the flat 
ground, as far as the eye could see between the 


42 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


thinly-set columnar tree-boles, had been burned 
over recently, and many old logs and decayed 
stumps were still smoking. A few miles far- 
ther on, the fire had been extinguished weeks 
before, and now the wild grass was springing 
up through the ashes. Tinkling cow-bells rang 
plaintively here and there, where scattered 
herds ranged free. 

Willard’s attention alternated from the mo- 
notonous but interesting landscape to the back 
of the shapely head and shoulders of the girl. 
He counted the knots of dark-scarlet ribbon : 
he wondered at the blue-blackness of her long, 
wavy hair. He silently declared that she was 
the most beautiful sight he ever had seen. No 
doubt she was ; for she was a perfectly-formed 
child of the South, — innocent, unsophisticated 
in appearance, full of the bloom and sweetness 
and fervor of the climate. With all this, her 
demeanor was so stately and dignified, — so 
pleasingly reserved. 

She addressed the lame man as Victor, and 
brother, pointing out to him whatever in the 
landscape happened to interest her. A very 
musical, baby-like voice was hers, full of a 


A SAND -LILY 


43 


freshness and sincerity far removed from the 
affectation so common in the voices of society 
women. Willard noted with inward delight 
how perfectly she ignored his presence ; how, 
when she turned her face to this side or that, 
she appeared utterly unaware that he sat so 
close behind her. The breath from her red, 
dewy lips almost reached his cheek ; and some- 
times the loose ends of her ribbons fluttered 
across his eyes. He sat there silent and still, 
taking in all the freshness and uniqueness of 
the charming vision, until at length the coach 
was stopped in front of a lonely country house, 
to allow a stout red-haired woman, who stood, 
basket in hand, by the roadside, to get in. She 
was of the class called Crackers, — the poor, 
illiterate white folk of the sandy pine lands 
of Georgia and Florida. She was going to 
Tallahassee with a large hamper of eggs to 
sell. 

“With your permission, sir,” said the lame 
man to Willard ; and, with that gallantry never 
wanting in the South, he gave place by his 
sister to the woman, and took the unoccupied 
part of the young man’s seat. 


44 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The hamper of eggs was taken charge of by 
the driver ; and, with loud puffing and blowing, 
the stout dame clambered in, and got herself 
into position, where she obviously crowded her 
slender companion against the uncushioned 
side-posts of the rude coach. 

“ Lordee-e-e, but I am tired ! ” she exclaimed 
in a wheezing voice. “ Huntin’ o’ hens’ nests 
is no fun in these ’ere woods. But I ’spec’ you 
never, likely, hunted ’em any. My gal, Laura 
Ann Canzada, she kin ’most beat me a-findin' 
of ’em. Guess you’re quality, ain’t ye ? an’ 
you don’t have hens about, mebbe. Well, 
some folks must be quality, and some po’; an’ 
I hope you don’t mind me a-settin’ by ye ? ” 

“ Oh, no, I assure you ! ” said the girl, turn- 
ing quickly, and smiling very sweetly upon the 
broad red face. “ It is no trouble : I like to 
have you sit by me. How many eggs have 
you ? ” 

“ Fifty-two dozen, an’ ten over,” replied the 
woman. “They’re a good lot, an’ ’ill bring a 
quarter a dozen. I need the money jest about 
now too ; fur Laura Ann Canzada is a-goin’ foi 
to git married, an’ she needs some things. You 


A SAND -LILY. 


45 


know a body can’t get married ’ithout some 
new things.” 

“ See what beautiful lilies ! ” exclaimed the 
girl, turning quickly, and pointing to some pale, 
delicate flowers growing in the sand beside 
the road. There were clusters of blue violets 
also. 

“ Them’s sand-lilies,” said the woman : “they 
don’t amount tomothin’.” 

“ Oh ! I like thefti ever so much, they are so 
pure and sweet,” rejoined the girl. “If I were 
out there, I should gather a bouquet of them.” 

“ The Lor’ ! ” said the woman contemptu- 
ously. “ I wouldn’t.” 

When a man loses his head, he usually 
fancies himself in some way bound to dis- 
close the loss. We all may laugh at the 
victim ; but just how long ago we were in a 
like fix; we do not care to contemplate. 

Willard leaped right out over the wheel of 
the slow-going coach, and alighted well on his 
feet in the yielding sand. He went to the 
roadside, and gathered a great bunch of the 
lilies. The driver, seeing him out, stopped for 
him to get in again. 


46 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The Cracker woman took advantage of the 
stillness to fill and light a brown-clay pipe, 
which she began vigorously smoking. As 
good luck would have it, the wind carried the 
astringent whiffs away from the young lady. 

By the time Willard had returned to the 
coach loaded with his floral treasure, the folly 
of his act had begun to dawn upon him. He 
actually paused and hesitated at the door. 
When he sprang out, nothing in the act he 
contemplated had seemed difficult or out of 
propriety. Now the matter was totally re- 
versed. It was not permissible, not to be 
thought of. He glanced at the young lady, 
and saw, or fancied he saw, an illy-concealed 
look of annoyance in her face. His first im- 
pulse, then, was to throw the flowers down ; but 
a thought struck him. As he passed into the 
coach he put the lilies in the Cracker woman’s 
lap, and said in a very gentle, deferential tone 
of voice, “Surely, madam, you cannot think 
those are ugly.” 

“W’y, the Lor’^now! I’m much erbleeged 
to ye,” said the woman ; and she actually 
blushed. “ Them’s not so mighty ugly. — Here, 


A SAND -LILY. 


47 


take some of ’em, miss : you said you’d like to 
have some.” She handed two or three of the 
prettiest of them to the girl, who in turn 
blushed and hesitated. The ruse was so trans- 
parent, the trick so bold, that she scarcely 
knew what she ought to do. The whole thing 
was lost on her brother. He had not caught 
the essence of it. She saw as much by a 
quick, furtive glance. Really Willard had not 
expected this turn. It was not a ruse : he 
had only meant to get rid of the lilies as 
gracefully as possible. He quickly caught the 
probable interpretation, and regretted it. There 
had been nothing clever in the whole affair. 

The driver came to the rescue with a great 
snap of his whip, starting his horses forward 
at a sweeping trot. 

Willard saw the girl take the lilies, and hold 
them in a self-conscious way. She looked 
aside as if noting the sudden change taking 
place in the landscape ; for they were now 
entering the beautiful hill country. In a basin 
fringed with water-oaks, bays, and magnolias, 
a little lake, not a half-mile distant, was shin- 
ing like a great diamond. The road was no 


48 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


longer sand : it was cut in a dark chocolate 
soil, now deep down in cool, shady glens, anon 
on airy ridges, from which the broad planta- 
tions were visible for miles. They passed 
close by the ashes and ruins of what must 
have been one day a grand country mansion. 
The heavy round columns of stuccoed brick 
which had supported the roof of its long ve- 
randa were still standing, and one blackened 
wall was outlined against the foliage of some 
giant trees. The tenantless negro-quarter, 
with its hollow square of cabins, was mostly 
rotted down ; and the unkempt orchards and 
fenceless fields told a most pathetic story of 
a departed time. And then the hills grew 
bolder, shot through by tangled ravines, and 
interrupted by deep ponds and lily-crowded 
marshes. They saw a snowy heron wading 
among the spatter-dock and lily-bonnets of a 
dull pool, and now and then a raft of duck 
scurried away among the cypress-stems on the 
margin of a lake. At length their road plunged 
right into one of the prettiest of those lakes, 
and they followed. Up came the bright water, 
higher and higher, until a little stream trickled 


A SAND -LILY. 


49 


into the bed of the coach. They all had to 
lift their feet to keep from getting them wet. 
The horses moved slowly, stretching out their 
necks as if in deep enjoyment of the cool bath 
after their miles of toil. When they had 
emerged on the other side, they trailed a damp 
line in the dusty road for a long way. 

At noon they stopped at a country-house, 
where the driver changed horses, and where 
the lunch each had brought with him was 
quietly, and to all appearances selfishly, dis- 
cussed. 

The girl ate little. Willard saw her gliding 
about in the grove of slender oaks hard by, 
like some happy dryad out for an airing after a 
long sleep in the heart of a tree. 

The driver, harnessing his horses in the 
rude open stable, sang in a mellow voice a 
garbled versiop of the local favorite. 

A tall, lank woman, quite young, but sallow 
and wrinkled, was hoeing in a vegetable-gar- 
den, whose fence of woven pine slats was over- 
run with luxuriant scuppernong-vines. Sitting 
on the farmhouse steps, a sun-tanned girl was 
nursing a chubby boy baby. 


50 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


There was much evidence of a certain sort 
of thrift about this place ; but it was the home- 
spun, hollow, unprogressive sort. The house, 
the little barn, the fences, the people and their 
clothing, appeared to have been left over from 
the last century, an after-taste, so to speak, of 
the barren, tidy pioneer days. A high-wheeled 
one-ox cart, for instance, stood with its rude 
shafts resting against the fence. A heavy 
hand-loom, with an unfinished strip of cop- 
peras-colored cloth on its roller, rested under a 
lean-to shed. Even while Willard stood curi- 
ously gazing, a white-haired but nimble old 
woman climbed to the high seat of this rude 
engine, and began that “shuttle-bang, bang, 
shuttle-bang, bang,” so familiar to the ear fifty 
years ago. 

All these primitive elements, taken in con- 
nection with the dry, dusky, • breezy land- 
scape, the old fields, the shallow furrows in 
the ploughed lands, had the effect to impress 
Willard’s mind with one side of Floridian life ; 
for they were now in Florida. In fact, the 
whole face of things changes as soon as you 
cross the line. The Georgian roads are s*=» 


A SAND-LILY. 


51 


much better, and the Georgian farmers and 
planters so much more modern and energetic. 
Even the Georgian pigs seem to have shorter 
noses, and less of the greyhound lightness of 
body, than their Florida cousins. 

Once more on the road, the coach soon 
plunged into a cool, shady hollow, whence it 
followed the Indian red road up, up to the sum- 
mit of an airy ridge ; and presently, off some 
miles to the southward, the scattered spires 
and many-gabled roofs of Tallahassee were out- 
lined against the blue sky and bluer hill-peaks 
beyond. The sun was nearly down. Lake 
Jackson shone like a mirror. In every direc- 
tion broad plantations lay spread from hill to 
hill, like dull chocolate-colored cloths, upon 
which giants might repose. Here again they 
passed orchards of Le Conte pear-trees, and 
several young orange-groves. Then they were 
trundled down a long incline, and up a sharp 
acclivity, to the broad gateway leading into a 
tangled enclosure, where stood a stately, old- 
time mansion. Here the girl and her brother 
got out of the coach ; and Willard watched 
them slowly pass along the broad walk between 


52 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


the trees, until suddenly a turn of the vehicle 
placed him in a beautiful street, looking down 
which he saw the spacious homes of Tallahas- 
see. Now all was shade and breezy coolness. 
Long lines of oaks canopied the carriage-way, 
and the sidewalks had still other rows for their 
especial need. Shrubs of many kinds were 
a-bloom, and the angular beds of the flower- 
gardens were gay with color. Mocking-birds 
were singing. 

To Willard it was as if he had been plunged, 
all at once, into a new, strangely charming 
world. The spell of the Flower-land was upon 
him. 


INSIDE THE PALE . 


S3 


CHAPTER V. 

INSIDE THE PALE. 

' | "''HE two or three half-drunken members of 
the legislature who chanced, between po- 
tations, to be sauntering back and forth on the 
concrete floor of the City Hotel veranda, wit- 
nessed the arrival of the “ hack ” from Thomas- 
ville, and saw the unexpected meeting of two 
warm but long-separated friends. 

Willard had scarcely alighted when Cau 
thorne pounced upon him. They held each 
other off at arm’s-length, and gazed in a rap- 
ture of pleased surprise. 

“ Cauthorne ! Is it really you ? ” 

“ Willard ! Willard! My dear boy!” 

Their tones, husky with emotion, meant a 
great deal. Neither could formulate any defi- 
nite phrase. Silence and mere ejaculations 
alternated most expressively. Their embar- 


54 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


rassment was really schoolboyish in its out- 
ward manifestations. 

They had been apart for four years, and 
this meeting was the offspring of the merest 
chance. As they stood there, the contrast in 
their physiques was very striking. In fact, no 
two men could less resemble each other. Cau- 
thorne very tall, broad-shouldered, powerful in 
body and limb, looked like a bronze Hercules 
beside Willard, whose medium stature, and 
lithe, light gracefulness of build was empha- 
sized by the comparison. 

As they went into the hotel, they met Arthur 
Vance coming out. His fine dark face and 
courtly bearing impressed Willard, as they did 
every one who came in contact with him. He 
was so different from ordinary men in person 
and in manners. He bowed to Cauthorne, and 
passed on. 

A day or two later, when Willard had be- 
come well settled in the old hotel, he knocked 
at the door of Cauthorne’s room. He was 
admitted, and found his friend in the midst of 
scattered sheets of manuscript, toiling away at 
his novel. 


INSIDE THE PALE. 


55 


“ I am in a hobble, Cauthorne,” he said, half 
lightly, half despairingly. 

“Well, what now?” inquired Cauthorne, 
looking up, with a pen behind his ear. 

“A deuced hobble,” continued Willard, 
dropping into a chair. “It all comes of an 
ante-bellum friendship of the dearest sort be- 
twixt my father and one of the • old nabobs 
here. I didn’t dream, when I sent up my card, 

that I should go and run into such a dilem- 
»» 

ma. 

Cauthorne preserved an attitude of expec- 
tant, interested inquiry. 

“ Really the intimacy was before I was born, 
I suppose. I have heard my father speak of 
it, over and over, ever since I can remember. 
Those visits he used to make every winter to 
the house of his Tallahassee friend were his 
favorite theme. The last thing my dear father 
said to me, when I was setting out from home 
to come here, was to be sure and call on this 
dear old Tallahassee friend. You know my 
father is past travelling now, — partial par- 
alysis.” 

“ As yet the startling difficulty of your situa- 


56 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


tion fails to impress me,” said Cauthorne, push- 
ing a half-empty box of cigars across the table 
to his friend. 

“I know,” exclaimed Willard impatient^, 
“ I know ; but there’s more to come. The old 
nabob has called upon me ; in fact, he has 
rushed upon me, and overwhelmed me. You 
cannot imagine how completely he has me in 
his power.” 

“ There’s a point to all this, I imagine,” said 
Cauthorne, — “ a startling point, which you will 
uncover directly, like disclosing a masked 
battery.” 

“It was worse than a torpedo under one’s 
feet,” said Willard, nervously lighting a cigar. 
“ If there’s any one thing I abhor, it’s becom- 
ing a part of some one’s family. I can’t bear 
it. Now, my father used to delight in such a 
thing. He used to come here, and stay for 
three months at a time in the old judge’s 
mansion.” 

“Judge who?” demanded Cauthorne, in a 
tone of suddenly aroused interest. 

“Judge La Rue,” replied Willard, — “a 
stately old-timer, who, in the days of slavery, 


INSIDE THE PALE. 


57 


lived like a lord, dispensing absolutely un- 
limited hospitality.” 

“Judge La Rue,” repeated Cauthorne in a 
wholly inconsequent way. 

“Yes,” said Willard; “and nothing will 
satisfy him but that I shall go to his house, 
baggage and all, and make it my home so long 
as I stay here. He puts it on high ground, 
and I see that I cannot refuse him.” 

“ Of course you cannot,” said Cauthorne : 
“you ought not to think of refusing.” Then, 
with the air of one who has the right to speak 
as an expert, he added, “ These Southern folk 
have very high and very queer notions of hos- 
pitality. It would be a mortal offence, an un- 
speakable breach of etiquette, under the cir- 
cumstances, for you not to take the judge’s 
house for your hotel. So you may order a 
dray, and move in.” 

Willard laughed at his friend’s severe levity, 
little dreaming how joyfully Cauthorne would 
have accepted such an offer with such a plea 
to back it. As for the latter gentleman, he 
gazed abstractedly at the queer old mantle over 
the queer little fireplace. He drummed on the 
table with his fingers. 


58 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ To be explicit,” said Willard, “ I have ac- 
cepted Judge La Rue’s offer, and shall, as you 
say, ‘ move in ’ to-morrow.” 

“ You are a lucky dog,” exclaimed Cauthorne 
earnestly. But Willard thought it was sar- 
casm; for Cauthorne immediately added, “You 
get out of a dilemma so easily. I thought you 
had come to me for counsel.” 

“So I have.” 

“Yes, after the fact. Little good advice can 
do you now.” 

“ I am afraid you are right.” 

“No, I am not. I never was exactly right. 
I always get there too late. The key is always 
lost. Some one always gets in ahead of me,” 
cried Cauthorne, with a vehemence which 
seemed to Willard absurdly out of place. But 
a moment later he radically changed his tone 
and manner, and with his old gentle laugh 
said, — 

“You will better understand my feelings in 
a day or two. You are going into green pas- 
tures which I have long been viewing from 
afar.” 

Of course Cauthorne’s real meaning was lost 


INSIDE THE PALE. 


59 


on Willard, who had not even the slightest 
knowledge of his friend’s troubles. For a time 
silence fell between them ; Willard lazily smok- 
ing, Cauthorne still softly drumming on the 
table with the fingers of his left hand. 

“Well, it’s nothing serious, after all,” said 
Willard, as if resolutely shaking off the dis- 
agreeable impression of the moment. “ I sup- 
pose one must cast about for some pleasant 
antidote. By the way,” and he smiled like a 
suddenly pleased boy, “by the way, I came 
over from Thomasville with a Tallahassee girl 
of wonderful beauty. She and her one-legged 
brother — an ex-Confederate soldier, I sus- 
pect — had been visiting an aunt up there. 
Now, if I could ” — 

“If you could,” interrupted Cauthorne with 
peculiar emphasis. “ How can you help it ? 
Will you shut your eyes, stop your ears, and 
bridle your tongue?” He had kept all Miss 
La Rue’s comings and goings well in view. 
He knew all that Willard could tell him, and 
more*. “The judge’s daughter is the hand- 
somest, loveliest, most noteworthy girl in 
Florida. It was she who came in the ‘hack’ 


6o 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


with you. You are going to be one of the 
family, her father’s guest, her intimate friend, 
her frantic lover.” 

The next day Willard took possession of a 
grand airy room in the La Rue homestead, 
from whose many-mullioned windows he could 
look away over a rolling landscape, dotted with 
old weather-beaten plantation houses, to the 
vast forests in the mysterious regions of Wa- 
kulla. 

This room pleased him. Its floor was of 
white hard wood, smooth as glass, with a worn 
rug in the centre. A tall mahogany bedstead 
stood in an airy niche. The walls were pa- 
pered in dull gray, without border or dado. 
A round table of heavy workmanship, richly 
veneered, stood on the rug. A small ebony- 
framed looking-glass leaned forward above a 
curious chest of drawers. A landscape in oil, 
very old, but not valuable, and one of those 
French lithographic reproductions of the blue- 
veiled Madonna of Correggio, hung flat and 
high by dull gold ropes. The windows and 
the bedstead were curtained in costly lace, yel- 
low with age. The ceiling, grayish sky-blue, 


INSIDE THE PALE . 


6 1 


had a central rosette of stucco-work, from 
which depended a brass chandelier bedecked 
with hexagonal glass crystals. A small fire- 
place, containing tall yellow andirons and a 
curious wire fender, was surmounted by a black 
mantle of fluted and carved wood. The room 
had a look of fixedness and amplitude, an old- 
time scarcity of decoration, a cool soberness 
of tint, an indescribable atmosphere of broad 
serenity and changeless repose. It was, in 
fact, a guest-chamber of the ante-bellum , King- 
Cotton days. 

Willard sat by a window across which a 
magnolia had flung a glossy spray of rich green 
leaves. The balmy wind from the Gulf came 
in upon him with the fragrance of yellow jas- 
mine. He heard a mocking-bird. He looked 
happy. 

One morning, not long after, Cauthorne 
walked the whole length of that broad street 
of Tallahassee which runs north and south 
along the highest ground in the city. 

He moved slowly, studying the trees, the 
fences, the houses, the curiously arranged, 
lozenge-shaped flower-beds, the tall windmills 


62 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


for pumping water, the long verandas, the 
rows of dormer-windows. 

When he came to Judge La Rue’s place, he 
saw, through a rift in the foliage, Willard and 
Miss La Rue sitting on a bench under a mossy 
live-oak. The stately judge in an easy-chair 
sat conveniently near. They seemed as con- 
tented and smiling, as the cloudless sky that 
shimmered overhead. 

“ He is inside the pale,” thought Cauthorne. 


SOME APPREHENSIONS. 


63 


CHAPTER VI. 

SOME APPREHENSIONS. 

J UDGE LA RUE’S mansion, as to its archi- 
tecture, was a very plain building, three 
stories high, or rather two stories and a roof- 
story, the latter lighted by small dormer-win- 
dows. It was of brick stuccoed, as nearly all 
the better class of houses in middle Florida are, 
and, under the action of that very peculiar cli- 
mate, had taken on a most venerable dark-gray 
color. It stood, as the reader has been told, 
on the northernmost outskirt of the city, in a 
little wood of some fifteen or twenty acres, on 
the west side of the street ; and fronted south, 
its upper windows and verandas overlooking 
many of the most beautiful scenes in that 
country, which the Indians had named Talla- 
hassee, — the high and lovely land. Once the 
grove in which it stood had been tended with 


64 


A TALLAHASSEE GILL. 


scrupulous care, the trees neatly pruned, the 
vines trained, the shrubs and plants kept 
strictly within bounds. Now every thing had 
a wild, half-neglected look. The fence was 
shabby, the gates awry. On the north side of 
the enclosure stood the cabins, once so white 
and clean, where the household servants, to the 
number of twenty-five, used to live. The plan- 
tation-slaves, of course, never had been here, 
their quarters being out near Lake Jackson.^ 
These cabins were now literally falling down 
from disuse and consequent decay. The lands 
of the La Rue estate spread out for some 
miles, counting several thousand acres of the 
richest in the region, whilst the La Rue slaves 
had been numbered by hundreds. So vast a 
property, with no longer any reliable system of 
labor, had become unwieldy and unprofitable ; 
but Judge La Rue had steadily refused to sell 
one foot of it, allowing it to grow up in bram- 
bles and sedge rather than see it parcelled out 
among Crackers and negroes. He had owned 
some rail Way-stock before the war, worthless 
then, which, when peace was declared, he 
found realizing him a small income. To this, 


SOME APPREHENSIONS. 


65 


by “ renting out” certain portions of his estate 
he added as much more, which enabled him to 
live in a style somewhat better than most of 
his neighbors could affect. In other words, he 
kept a coachman, a gardener, some house-ser- 
vants, a carriage and horses, gave little select 
dinners, insisted on entertaining such cele- 
brated people as chanced to visit Tallahassee, 
and, in fact, maintained a creditable shadow of 
his old manner of living. In the mean time, 
however, the fences were disappearing from 
his plantation, and his grand old mansion was 
becoming more picturesque than comfortable. 

Lucie La Rue remembered the old order of 
things in a shadowy sort of way. She was a 
year old when the war broke out, five years old 
when it ended. Her impressions of the glory 
of Tallahassee in ante-bellum days were strong; 
but they were at second hand, mere reflections 
of what her father and her brother and her 
aunt had seen and experienced, exaggerated as 
such things always are in the telling. Her 
mother had died in the mid-days of the war, 
leaving her to the care of her father’s maiden 
sister, a highly educated spinster, as peculiar as 


66 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


she was cultured, as good at heart as she was 
exclusive in her social tastes. 

Since the close of the war Lucie had been 
much of the time at a school in Georgia, for 
Florida is a State without a college of any 
sort ; and she had once been on a visit for a 
few weeks in Richmond, Va., where she had 
relations. But she had really seen nothing of 
society proper. In this old house, as we have 
seen it, her life bounded by the hill-rimmed 
horizon of the Tallahassee country, with her 
father, her aunt, and her brother for compan- 
ions, she had grown into that perfect loveli- 
ness which had made her the recipient of much 
tender attention from the best young men 
of the region, most noted and most favored 
among them Col. Arthur Vance, the rising 
lawyer and politician. Nor had Lucie’s life 
been at all dull or unsatisfying. Her nature 
was simple and sincere, responding perfectly to 
every touch of the rich, warm influences of the 
climate, and the poetical power of the great 
change a few years had wrought within the 
bounds of her vision. 

It was this perfect contentment, this beauti 


SOME APPREHENSIONS. 


*>1 


ful unison, so to speak, between the girl and 
her surroundings, that had made Cauthorne say 
to himself, “ She is a true type of the transition 
from the old order of things to the new.” 

Willard found life at the mansion far less 
irksome than he had feared. In fact, his re- 
ception had been so cordial, his initiation into 
the family routine so delicately managed, that 
he was happy before he knew it. Some very 
strong bond of friendship must have existed 
between Judge La Rue and Willards father, to 
make the old Southerner say, — 

“ You seem like my own son, sir, being the 
son of my dear old friend. You are just like 
him, too, just like him. Ah, he’s a rare man, 
sir, a rare man ! He used to make my house 
gay with his wit. He was the life of it for 
many a winter. I shall be disappointed if you 
do not make yourself freely and perfectly at 
home.” He had attended Willard to his room, 
a servant following with his baggage. “ That’s 
the very bed which your father slept in twenty 
years ago, the last winter he was here. I hope 
it will hold you as it did him, for many a happy 


season. 


68 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Some men would have mocked in their hearts 
at this profuse welcome ; but Willard knew too 
well how his father loved this old man, and he 
was doubly sure of every word’s tender sin- 
cerity. 

Judge La Rue’s sister, the stately old maiden 
who presided over his house, took a very prac- 
tical view of this introducing of the young man 
into their home circle. 

“You must look at it from every stand- 
point,” she said to the judge, “but most par- 
ticularly from one.” 

“And, my dear sister, what one is it?” he 
asked. 

“The matrimonial one,” was the laconic 
answer. 

“ Humph ! I don’t just see how that can 
come up. You know Lucie and Col. Vance ” — 

“ Certainly, dear brother ; but they are not 
engaged. Lucie says they are not,” hastily 
spoke up the sister. 

“ Well, of course, not formally engaged ; but 
it is all understood, you know. He and I have 
often discussed the matter,” responded Judge 
La Rue. 


SOME APPREHENSIONS. 


69 


“ Well, you ought to know as well as I, that 
all your discussions and understandings of the 
matter with Col. Vance will not weigh a straw 
against a romantic love if it should spring up 
between this young Willard and Lucie. For 
my part, I think there may be danger.” 

The judge laughed, considered, and then 
laughed again. 

“It would be hard on the colonel,” he finally 
said. And the tone in which he said it gave 
Miss Julie La Rue to understand that her 
brother would not care a straw if the worst 
should come. 

“ We’ll not trouble ourselves about that, 
Julie,” he added : “ Lucie can take care of 
that.” 

“ Oh, no doubt of it ! young girls usually 
can. I only mentioned the matter on your 
account. If you are willing to risk it so, 
there’s not a word I can say against it, only if 
he should take Lucie away ” — 

The old man started, and actually grew pale. 
Her last sentence had struck him like a bullet. 
He met his sister’s look with a feeble smile. 
\ was easy to see that they both centred the 


7 o 


A TALLAHASSEE GTRL. 


whole world in Lucie. If he should take her 
away, meant the same as if he should snurf out 
the sun. 

“He will talk to her about New York and 
Boston, and fill her mind full of the fascinating 
things of life in the great cities,” said Miss 
La Rue ; “ and you know that nothing so 
charms a girl. You may depend upon it, there 
is danger.” 

The old man did not reply. He sat with 
downcast eyes and trembling lips, his childish 
fear of so dreadful a calamity as his sister pre- 
dicted completely mastering him. 

“It would never do, never do,” he said at 
last. “ Our flower would wither in the cold 
North, Julie.” 

“I should fear so,” said Miss La Rue, ner- 
vously turning the small emerald on her fin- 
ger. “And Mr. Willard seems to be a very 
accomplished and winning person, and — and 
much younger than Col. Vance.” 

“ He is a delightful boy, just like his father, 
Julie,” said the old man warmly, resting his 
wrinkled hands on his knees, and gazing at the 
floor. “ He would ” — 


SOME APPREHENSIONS. 


71 


Just then Lucie entered the room, her face 
slightly flushed, her eyes very bright. She 
had a red flower at her throat. She carried 
her hat by its strings. 

“ Papa,” she said, in a voice which fluttered 
like a bird getting out of a cage, “ he wants to 
see Murat’s grave. He has asked me to show 
him the way to the cemetery.” 

She paused, and glanced from her father to 
her aunt, as if struck with the solemnity of 
their faces. “Ought I to go?” she added 
quickly. 

The silence following the question was too 
utter to last. Miss Julie La Rue looked up 
presently, and said, — 

“ I see no objection to ” — 

“ Oh, no ! certainly, go on. It w T ould be rude 
to object. Go, child, of course,” hastily inter- 
rupted the old man. 

Lucie stood for a moment longer, idly swing- 
ing her hat. Her aunt was more than usually 
aware of her wonderful beauty and grace. 

“Don’t keep Mr. Willard waiting, if he is 
waiting, Lucie,” she said gravely. “ It will be 
tea-time soon.” 


7 2 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ Oh ! we cannot be long gone. It is such a 
short way, you know, and there’s not much to 
see,” replied Lucie, putting on her hat, and 
tying the strings under her chin. 

“And so it begins,” said Miss La Rue, when 
the girl was gone. “ They’ll turn each other’s 
heads before they get back.” 

“You make it too strong, Julie,” responded 
the judge. “Lucie has always been a sensible 
girl, I’m sure.” 

“Yes,” said Miss La Rue, almost bitterly; 
“but he is just like his father.” 

And so the interview ended. 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


73 


CHAPTER VII. 

. THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 

T 7ILLARD watched, with all an artist’s 
* * interest, the comings and goings of 
Lucie about the old house. She seemed quite 
busy with domestic duties for a great part of 
the time, tripping lightly up and down the 
great stairway, and in and out of the spacious 
dining-room, often carrying in her hand a large 
bunch of keys. He could not fail to note that 
she was never trying any of the many kinds of 
fancy-work so much affected by girls, and that 
she preferred horseback-riding to any sedentary 
amusement. 

She had not been exactly shy of him, not in 
the least unfriendly ; but he had not readily 
understood her attitude towards him. A sort 
of gracious reserve, as he was inclined to term 
it, a sweet, unstudied, smiling dignity, so 
Sharked her manner that he all the time was 


74 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


half wondering if his presence in the house 
was not to her a constant annoyance, or, at 
least, a constant tax upon her patience. 

At table she took small part in the con- 
versations ; but she seemed attentive and ap- 
preciative, often betraying a sharp desire for 
knowledge of the ways of the world. When 
he would touch upon the whirling currents of 
fashion at the great Northern and Eastern cen- 
tres, she would lean forward with parted lips 
and beaming eyes, lending her ear to every 
word he said. 

If he addressed any part of his talk to her, 
she was always ready with some short, well- 
turned reply, which seemed to need no rejoin- 
der ; and yet he could not feel that she had 
avoided conversation. One thing he was sure 
of : she disclosed new beauties of form and 
face, new graces of manner, every day. He 
found himself so interested in her that the 
garrulity and unbounded courtesy and solici- 
tude of her father were considered as ills to be 
borne for her sake. 

He was touched by a furtive attention she 
bestowed upon the arrangement of things in 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


7 5 


his room. Whenever he walked out to be 
gone for an hour or two, he found upon his 
return certain evidences of her delicate taste ; 
a saucer of cut flowers upon his table, the 
current copy of a magazine, a plate of choice 
oranges, some little Floridian curiosity, a sea- 
bean, or a bit of native carving. Finally a 
little spirit-lamp, a stick of sealing-wax, and 
the family monogram stamp appeared ; as if, in 
accordance with an old Southern custom, his 
letters were henceforth expected to bear tes- 
timony to his thorough acceptance into the 
household. 

Willard’s ready imagination caught strong 
hold on the romance of his surroundings ; and 
it was with a certain trepidation wholly new to 
him, a sense of tender hesitancy, that he found 
himself addressing even the commonest Small- 
talk to Lucie. His consciousness acknowl- 
edged her vestal purity, and went a world 
further to clothe her in a saintly innocence, so 
childlike, so utterly her own, that he would 
have given all his wealth to be able to express 
it on canvas; He compared her with the 
young ladief he had known, rummaging in his 


;6 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


memory for the most beautiful among them, 
but there was none at all like her. 

When he asked her to go with him to see 
the grave of Murat, it was more to have her by 
him in the walk, than on account of any great 
desire to visit the noted little cemetery where 
the son of the King of Italy lies buried beside 
his Virginia bride. 

He met her on the broad steps of the front 
veranda. She was coming in from a stroll in 
the grove, loaded with jasmine-flowers, sprays 
of bridal-wreath, and great clusters of the 
lovely Cherokee-rose. She carried her hat by 
its ribbons, and her face was slightly flushed 
with exercise. As he stood beside her on the 
step, he discovered that she was not so tall as 
she had appeared. Her perfect symmetry, and 
the grace and dignity of her bearing, had 
added to the effect of her stature, which was 
really only medium. Her forehead was broad 
and low ; her eyes not black, but very dark 
gray ; her complexion almost olive, delicate as 
a babe’s ; and her mouth sweet and fed, almost 
thin-lipped, with just a perceptible droop at the 


corners. 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


77 


“ I was just coming to look for you,” he said, 
taking a rose, and drawing its stem through 
his button-hole. “I wanted to ask a great 
favor of you.” 

“ I will be very glad to render you any ser 
vice,” she said, using will in place of shall , as 
even educated Southerners almost always do. 

“ I fear you are too tired now,” he said : 
“you seem to have been walking. But when 
you can, I hope you will go with me to the 
cemetery, and show me the grave of Prince 
Murat.” 

After a moment’s pause he continued, “It 
is not a particularly cheering thing, this ram- 
bling among tombs ; but ” — 

“ Oh, the place is small ! ” she hastened to 
say ; “ and it is scarcely well enough kept to 
have the usual solemnity of appearance. I will 
see if I can go with you when I have put away 
my flowers.” 

She passed on into the hall, leaving in the 
air about him the rich perfume of the jasmine, 
and, something sweeter still, the influence of 
her gentle loveliness. 

Willard looked away between the trees to 


73 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


the westward, and saw the sunlight flaming on 
the hills that notched the horizon. The mock- 
ing-birds were singing, as they sing nowhere 
else in the world. The wind, setting steadily 
from the south, poured over him gently, with 
a smack of saltness in its current. In his 
heart some new sentiment blew open like a 
flower. His nature took in a new element. 

When Lucie returned she had her hat on, 
with the strings tied under her pretty chin. 
She stopped suddenly, and, loosing a large 
bunch of keys from her belt, said with a little 
laugh, — 

“ Oh, I’ve brought away the keys ! Aunt 
will want to look to supper before I return. I 
must take them back to her.” 

She again turned into the house. Willard 
had often heard his father tell how every thing 
in the South has its lock, and how the house- 
keepers go about loaded with keys. To him 
this wearing at her belt the evidence of her 
domestic authority and power was a new and 
very charming thing, distinguishing the South- 
ern woman from the Northern one. In the 
case of Lucie it was picturesque ; it was strik- 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


79 


ingly becoming; it was, he thought, perfectly 
bewitching. 

“ I have fetched this for you,” she said, when 
she came out again, holding in her hand a 
slender orange wand. “ Gentlemen seem to 
find great comfort in canes. This was a tree 
I planted and cared for with my own hands, 
and last autumn it died.” 

Willard took the yellow-green stick, and 
whisking it in the air said, — 

“ It could not bear your tender kindness : it 
died of great good fortune.” 

“ I forgot to cover it,” she said gravely ; 
“ and there came a little frost.” 

“ Ah ! ” he said, “you have ruined my pretty 
speech. Which way do we go ? ” 

“Out through the south gate yonder. My 
dog is showing us the way.” 

A beautiful brown pointer was ambling 
along the half-obliterated walk, pausing now 
and then to look back at them. Col. Vance 
had given her this dog, three or four years ago, 
when he was regarding her as a little girl. 

It was a very satisfying thing, this walking 
under the broad-armed trees, with the dark 


So 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


winsome girl so close beside him ; and for a 
time Willard did not speak. He was in no 
lover-like, sentimental mood ; but silence was 
golden for its own sake. 

It chanced that just before they reached the 
gate he glanced to one side, and saw a little 
flower shining among some knotted live-oak 
roots. “A sand-lily,” he ejaculated, turning 
to pluck it. 

“ It is like those I gathered by the way on 
our drive from Thomasville,” he added, holding 
out the lily for her to take. This was the first 
time their journey had been mentioned. “You 
said you liked them.” 

“I do think them beautiful,” she said, not 
seeming to notice that he was offering the 
flower, and turning to wave her hand at her 
dog in a half-caressing, half-idle way. 

Willard let the lily fall when he opened the 
gate. They passed on, and left it there to 
wither. But the pointer, which, with more 
than dog-politeness, had allowed them to pre- 
cede him through the gate, snatched up the 
fallen bloom, and ran round his mistress, looking 
saucily up at her with it shining in his mouth. 


- THE TOMB OF A PRINCE . 


Si 


The man and the girl looked at each other, 
and smiled ; but nothing was said. 

Their way now led them in a narrow street 
hedged on one side with thick-growing trees. 
The sun was far down the west slope of the 
sky, its rays much softened by a sort of Indian- 
summer mist which often hangs on the Florid- 
ian horizon. 

Lucie was aware of something in Willard’s 
manners, in his personal bearing, in the modu- 
lations of his voice, very different from any 
thing she had ever seen in any one else. She 
was not sure what it was, but it was fasci- 
nating. She felt that he was in some sort a 
medium of revelation, through whose agency 
she was to look, if only for a momentary glance, 
over into some romantic field of experience, a 
field lying ever so far away from the happy, 
dull little eddy of Tallahassee life. As she 
walked by his side she noted with a girl’s quick 
eyes how perfectly his clothes fitted him from 
head to foot, and how easily and gracefully 
he did every thing, even to holding the little 
cane in the hollows of his elbows behind him. 
He seemed to have so little consciousness 


82 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


of himself, and such a light way of regarding 
her, which way, however, was as manly and 
sincere as it was light. She found herself 
voluntarily susceptible and receptive when he 
addressed her : he had had such wide experi- 
ence for so young a man ; he could so ably 
explain the mysteries of New York and Lon- 
don and Parisian society. The horizon of his 
worldly knowledge seemed to be the periphery 
of highest civilization. She was young, she 
was childlike in her imagination. She was 
healthily hungry for just sueh information, just 
such kaleidoscopic glimpses of the great outer 
world, as he voluntarily, and without an effort, 
gave her. Natures like hers, young, intense, 
receptive, keep what they get. They are not 
deletitious, and they are long-lived ; and he 
who first impresses them impresses them for 
the longest time. 

As they passed along, beautiful views were 
opened to them of deep vales with hills beyond. 
The yellowish building known as the Acad- 
emy — a high school, so called, for boys — 
crowned an eminence ; near by were some 
shapeless mounds, probably former military 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


33 


defences. They turned from one street to 
another, passing under enormous live-oak trees, 
and in front of low-roofed, reposeful-looking 
houses, and came at last to a sort of stile giv- 
ing into a small enclosure, where, amid a wild 
tangle of vines, bushes, and flowers, gleamed 
the ugly snow of the tombstones. 

Murat and his wife sleep side by side under 
simple slabs. At the head of each grave, rises 
a white-marble shaft. A stuccoed brick wall 
had once protected the spot ; but now a large 
part of a side had fallen down, and a big pine 
stump, where a tree had recently been cut, 
stood in the ragged breach. It was a pitifully 
neglected and unkempt spot. Some bridal- 
wreath bushes, heavy with bloom, hung over 
the little wooden gate now falling off its 
hinges. 

“It is nothing to see,” said Lucie, seating 
herself upon a projection of the broken wall, 
and taking a charmingly listless attitude. 

Willard looked at her instead of the graves. 
Until now he had not noticed how picturesquely 
she was dressed, — a simple gown of white 
stuff, with a crimson ruffle at the neck and 


8 4 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


wrists ; a palmetto hat, beautifully braided, 
lined with the same deep color of the ruffles. 

His eyes filled with a strange light, half 
smile, half wonder. A few months ago he had 
been at the Grosvenor private view ; and now 
he was rapidly thinking what a triumph this 
girl with her litheness and languor, her 
strength, her immobility, her intensity, her 
simplicity, her complexity, her picturesqueness, 
might win among the artistic aesthetes of 
London. 

He sat down at her feet. She hung above 
him like a study in white and scarlet against a 
shimmering background of pale green foliage. 
In that foliage a mocking-bird was whistling 
and trilling. Lucie smiled down at the young 
man, and said, — 

“ Are you through with sight-seeing ? shall 
we return?” 

“The scene has overpowered me; let me 
rest,” he answered, his half-closed eyes fixed 
steadily upon her. “There is untold luxury 
in lying here.” 

She got up, and stepped in between the py- 
ramidal gravestones, shaking a cloud of white 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


35 


petals from a little tree as she passed. Wil- 
lard thought Oscar Wilde had never been 
caught in such a shower of fragrant flakes. 

“Will you read the inscriptions before we 
go ? ” called Lucie. 

Slowly pulling himself back from his artistic 
dreaming, he arose and Joined her. 

They were half-kneeling side by side, de- 
ciphering the difficult carvings, when, with a 
sharp clatter of iron shoes, a horse passed 
swiftly in the street. They looked up. Col. 
Vance lifted his *hat, and bent low in his sad- 
dle. Lucie blushed. 

“ It is quite time to return, if you please,” 
she said, rising almost hurriedly. 

The mellow sunlight was going in a level 
flood from the hill-top at Bellevue, the Murat 
homestead, to the hill-top where they stood by 
the Murat tombs. The intervening valley was 
dark with shadows, like the valley all must 
cross. 

Going back by the way they had come, Wil- 
lard noticed that he must often quicken his 
step to keep pace with Miss La Rue. She was 
inclined to monosyllables in replying to his 


86 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


remarks. A great reserve had suddenly mas* 
tered her. She had removed herself from him 
just as far as she had been on the day they 
journeyed together from Thomasville. 

As often happens, the wings of the escaping 
bird disclosed the most beautiful colors. A 
tremor began in Willardjs breast. 

They reached the steps of the old gray 
house. She started to trip up ahead of him. 
She was eager to be alone for a while. Pier 
impulse startled him. He put out his hand, 
and, gently holding her back, looked into her 
face. In a second, a sense of the unpardona- 
ble rudeness of his involuntary act rushed 
upon him. He saw a flare of surprise over- 
spread her face. 

“ Pardon,” he said, by a supreme effort mas- 
tering himself. “ I thought there was a spider 
on your hat-ribbon. I hate insects. They al- 
most frighten me.” 

She smiled, very deftly loosed the knot of 
ribbon at her chin, and slipped off her hat. 
His agitation amused her. 

“You were mistaken,” she said, and went 
Into the house. 


THE TOMB OF A PRINCE. 


87 


When Willard reached his room, he took a 
pencil, and made a hasty sketch from memory 
of Lucie as she had appeared to him while 
lying for those brief moments at her feet. 

There was a rustling, velvet-like sound at his 
window : it was the wind dragging the mag- 
nolia spray across the upper panes. 


88 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


CHAPTER VIII 

TWO INVITATIONS. 

AUTHORNE had been so absorbed ir. Lis 



novel that he had made no note of the 
flight of the days. February was nearly gone, 
and with it the shooting season, so far as it 
concerned the quails. Now, in all the world 
there is no place like the Tallahassee country 
for sport with the bob-whites, there called 
partridges. The old plantations, with their 
hedges of Cherokee-rose, their thickets of 
scrub-oak, their fields of weeds, and their 
patches of oat-stubble, afford perfect cover for 
the game ; while the climate is so mild, the 
land so dry in the nesting season, and the 
hawks and foxes so few, that nothing seems to 

interfere with the increase of the bevies. 

0 

Cauthorne was an enthusiastic and a very 
accomplished sportsman. In fact, he consid- 


TWO INVITATIONS. 


89 


ered himself an incomparable shot. He be- 
longed to a crack gun-club of New York, and 
had worn its champion badge whenever he had 
found himself present at its annual pigeon- 
match. He had killed his seventy-five birds 
straight at thirty-one yards rise. He had 
made fourteen successful double shots in suc- 
cession, from ground traps, in a strong wind. 
These feats were performed, as a matter of 
course, with a shot-gun. But he was no less a 
rifleman. He had usually won at the Creed- 
moor ranges. He had broken thirty glass balls 
in succession, cast into the air at fifteen paces, 
this with a thirty-two calibre rifle. It was in 
the field behind the pointers and setters, that 
he had won the best fame. He had never 
been beaten on grouse, woodcock, or quail. 
The rising bird rarely escaped his first barrel ; 
but if it did, then his second cut it down, the 
reports ringing out in such rapid succession as 
to almost run together. 

The reader can well understand that Cau- 
thorne’s surprise was somewhat tempered with 
pleasure when he received a polite note from 
Col. Vance, the purport of which will appear 
in the following copy, taken from memory : — 


90 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Dear Sir, — I have just become acquainted with 
your friend Mr. Willard. He has accepted an invitation 
to shoot with me over some fine partridge-cover on one 
of my estates. I shall be highly pleased if you will con- 
sent to join us. I can promise you a day of rare sport, 
and a tolerable dinner at the plantation house. To-mor- 
row is the day. If you will do me the honor of accept- 
ing, I will call for you early with a carriage. 

Yours to command, 

Arthur Vance. 

To Mr. Cauthorne. 


The servant stood waiting, and Cauthorne 
acted on his first impulse, which was to accept. 
When the note had been written, and was on 
its way to Col. Vance, he would have recalled 
it if he had been able. It struck him that this 
sudden recognition of his personal standing by 
the proud Southerner had grown out of Wil- 
lard’s lodgement at Judge La Rue’s, a thing not 
pleasant to contemplate. While he was biting 
his mustache, and scowling, his friend Willard 
came in. Of late these comings-in had been 
very desultory, as if they had been the results 
of so many erratic efforts to back out of the 
charm which had enveloped him. His stays had 
been short, his talk scrappy and unsatisfactory. 


TWO INVITATIONS. 9 1 

Cauthorne handed Willard Col. Vance’s card 
of invitation. 

“Yes: he was speaking to me about what 
fine shooting the surrounding country affords; 
and I expressed a desire, and so forth,” said 
Willard. “ I told him you couldn’t be beaten 
with a gun. 

“‘Ah, he’s a champion, is he!’ exclaimed 
this handsome politician. ‘Then I must give 
him a turn. If he is your friend, you will not 
object to my inviting him to join us.’ ” 

“A deuced patronizing way!” muttered 
Cauthorne. 

“Oh, no!” said Willard: “a Southern way. 
You will find him delightful company when the 
ice is once broken.” 

“Confound the ice!” thundered Cauthorne, 
in a momentary explosion of what combustibles 
had been accumulating in him for the past 
fortnight or so. “ Confound the ice ! I don’t 
want it broken ! Let it freeze thicker, and stay 
longer.” 

Willard laughed. He knew that this one 
blast ended the storm. 

“ Of course you have accepted,” he said. 


92 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“Yes: of course,” said Cauthorne. “Did 
you ever know me to do a sensible thing in an 
emergency ? Of course I have very promptly 
accepted.” And he laughed too. 

“You can always be relied upon to do just 
the cleverest things possible,” said Willard. 
“ It would have been beastly rough in you to 
have refused. I like him, Cauthorne, and I 
can tell you that he’s no ordinary man.” 

“A clever politician, I take it,” said Cau- 
thorne. 

“More than that. You will say so before 
to-morrow night. He is a man of rare personal 
gifts. He has a big soul, and a bigger intel- 
lect,” warmly responded Willard. 

“ He seems to have made a proselyte of 
you,” rejoined Cauthorne. “No wonder his 
chances for the next governorship of Florida 
brighten daily. If he can capture you so 
easily, what can he do with these listless 
sand-lappers and peanut-crackers ! ” 

They lighted cigars, and, as became true 
Tallahassee folk, went out for a stroll in the 
cool afternoon. They walked down Adams 
Street south from the hotel, until they came 


TWO INVITATIONS. 


93 


to one of those open squares, which, covered 
with a scattered growth of immense live-oak 
trees, are such a peculiar and strikingly South- 
ern feature of the city. 

They sat down upon the buttressed roots of 
one of the oaks, whence they could look away 
beyond the hill-spurs to the low swamps of 
Wakulla, out of which rises the far-famed and 
mysterious smoke column of the so-called vol- 
cano. The sky overhead, seen through rifts 
in the foliage, was blue and cloudless ; but 
heavy Gulf-caps hung on the horizon south. 
There was a dancing silver film in the atmos- 
phere of the mid-distance, unlike any thing 
ever seen in a Northern climate. The wood, 
fringing the ridge a mile away, waved its 
shadowy tree-tops to the fitful motions of a 
breeze. A long angular line of water-fowl 
slowly flew northwestward, so high that the 
individual birds looked like mere flickering 
specks ; but their clanging voices fell to earth 
with great distinctness and power. A ragged 
negro, whose face wore the marks of utter 
resignation to hopeless poverty, went past in 
a rude cart, drawn by a lean hale ox, working 


94 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


between shafts. Following this came a fine 
old-fashioned rockaway with a pair of match 
bays, and a dapper colored driver. Inside 
were ladies and children who looked serenely 
happy. A gay party of young men and girls, 
returning from a ride to Lake Bradford and the 
country-seat of Gov. Bloxham, some distance 
west of the city, clattered along the road 
which winds diagonally through the square, 
their horses seeming to enjoy the merry talk 
and laughter as much as did the riders. The 
girls were picturesquely habited ; and their 
broad palmetto hats shaded faces as brown as 
nuts, and as pink-cheeked as peaches. The 
youths were all sallow and slender alike, sitting 
their horses like born troopers, and showing a 
dash of something like knighthood in their 
attentions to their gentle companions. It was 
a cavalcade of romance, such as is conjured up 
by the old Spanish tales. One thing was 
noticeable : despite the bright colors and taste- 
ful drapings, these were the children of parents 
made poor by the recent sectional downfall. 
The scantiness of luxuries was not hidden by 
the pretty maidenly arts of deception with 


TWO INVITATIONS. 


95 


needle and ribbons. The young men made 
little pretension to fashionable dress. It was 
a fair exhibition of the state of the middle and 
better classes of young people in the region. 
They were the sons and daughters of gentle- 
men turned shopkeepers, and of ladies turned 
domestic laborers. It marked the neutral 
ground between the old South and the future 
South. That cavalcade might furnish thought 
for a volume. 

“ These Southern girls are wonderfully beau- 
tiful, as a general thing,” said Willard. “I 
took careful note, and there was not an un- 
attractive one in that party. They are so lithe 
and graceful, too, and so fearless on horseback, 
especially here in Tallahassee.” 

“You are right,” said Cauthorne ; “and you 
may add that they are less understood, in fact, 
more misunderstood, than the girls of any sec- 
tion in this country, or in the enlightened world. 
I should much like to know them better. Truth 
to say, I must know them, and know them 
well, else my novel must fall dead.” 

“ My dear fellow, you shall know them right 
away,” exclaimed Willard. “ I have a pressing 


9 6 


A TALLAHASSEE GIAZ. 


request to introduce you at Judge La Rue’s 
next Thursday evening. A number of the 
best Tallahassee people, young and old, will 
be there. It will be a capital chance for you.” 

“And I willingly, nay, wilfully, shall turn it 
to account. I am utterly wreaking myself 
upon this story. It is my heroine that bothers 
me. I need this opportunity to find a model 
for her. Is Miss La Rue friendly, communica- 
tive ? ” 

“Not exactly: that is,” said Willard, frown- 
ing like one who is trying to untie a knot, “ she 
is naYve and enigmatical, whilst she is pleasing 
you with her sweetness and kindliness of man- 
ner. She seems untrained, and yet quite for- 
mal. Oh, well ! I can’t express it. She’s the 
most beautiful and charming girl I ever saw, 
that’s the upshot of it.” 

“And so you are crazy, as usual, and make 
love to her from morning till ” — 

“ No,” interrupted Willard, “ I do nothing 
of the sort. She has a way of keeping one 
constantly on his guard. One feels in her 
presence like a pilgrim just reaching a holy 
shrine : he is too reverentially happy for any 


TWO INVITATIONS. 


97 


further effort, so he slips down at her feet, 
and ” — 

“ Infernal nonsense ! ” exclaimed Cauthorne. 
“ I am a flesh-and-blood man, and a democrat. 
I’ll not slip down at her feet. I’ll stand up in 
front of her, and she’ll have to look up to me 
if there is any looking-up done.” He got up 
as he spoke ; and Willard glanced admiringly 
over his stalwart frame and into his resolute 
face, so lit with his half-earnest, half-mocking 
mood, that it was hard to say whether he were 
really feigning this burst of feeling. 

The sun fell behind the bold hills in the 
west, and set ablaze the upper domes of the 
Gulf-caps ; the silver of the air was turned to a 
dusky gray. The breeze fell to stillness ; but 
a heavy waft of perfume came from the flower- 
gardens of the old Walker homestead, and the 
mocking-birds redoubled their singing. 

Returning to the hotel, Cauthorne and Wil- 
lard met a party of three or four legislators, 
and in their midst Col. Vance, who came for- 
ward and shook hands cordially with both. 

“ Soon in the morning,” he said, in a deep, 
rich voice, so full of friendliness and comrade- 


9 8 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


ship, “soon in the morning we will go after 
.the partridges. Have you a gun, Mr. Cau- 
thorne ? ” 

“The very best one in the world,” was the 
prompt reply. 

“I have its mate, then,” said Vance, bowing; 
“but there our equality ends. You are an in- 
comparable field-shot, your friend informs me ; 
and I recollect some reports of your achieve- 
ments in the London Field.” 

“My matches with Major Tilney-Dubois, of 
her Majesty’s Light Guards ?” 

“ Yes : they were cleverly won, sir.” 


SUNRISE ON THE AUGUSTINE ROAD. 99 


CHAPTER IX. 

SUNRISE ON THE AUGUSTINE ROAD. 

TN springtime the mornings fill Tallahassee 
with a glory not to be found anywhere else. 
No stranger, chancing to stop in the city for a 
day or two, can fail to notice so striking a local 
feature of the climate. It may rain all night, 
and it sometimes does, with a driving wind 
howling a mad accompaniment to the swash- 
ing flood ; but the morning will break up the 
clouds, and the sunrise will be supremely fine. 
From the middle of February to the middle of 
May, the true Tallahassee springtime, it is 
very seldom that the sun gets up behind a' 
cloud. 

Day had just fairly appeared in the east, 
with gray lines of sky and spears of amber 
light alternating above the billowy horizon, 
when Cauthorne was called, and informed that 


100 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Col. Vance’s carriage was waiting for him. 
Would he take a cup of coffee in his room, 
before starting? He would: he took two cups, 
a biscuit, and a glass of wine. Willard was 
already in the carriage . by Col. Vance’s side, 
when Cauthorne made his appearance. 

“You do not intend to kill the birds on 
their roosting-grounds, I hope ? ” said the lat- 
ter, mildly grumbling. 

“You don’t call this early, sir,” replied 
Vance. “ Remember we have five miles to 
drive. The sun will be fairly up by the time 
we reach the first hill-top on the Augustine 
road, and the quails will be whistling before we 
arrive at my kennels.” 

Willard yawned, and said, — 

“ Really, it is a late start. You were a hor- 
rible while dressing.” 

“ I was bolting my breakfast,” rejoined Cau- 
thorne. 

“Your breakfast! Why didn’t you ask me 
to join you ? I haven’t had a morsel since 
tea,” said Willard. 

Col. Vance smiled grimly. He had broken 
his fast before dawn. 


• SUNRjSE ON THE AUGUSTINE ROAD . ■ IOI 

“At my plantation house,” he said, “I will 
give you a country lunch before we take to 
the fields. It will be ready for us at ten. We 
will not dine till our shooting is over.” 

Cauthorne got into the carriage. The 
horses’ heads were turned eastward. They 
were driven at a swinging trot past the Capitol, 
down the long incline to where the street ends 
in the Augustine road; and farther, faster down 
into a rippling little stream of clear water. 
They dashed noisily across this, and along a 
level sandy stretch, then up a bold hill, broad 
fields on one hand, a dense wood on the other. 
The air, with just a touch of chilliness in it, 
hung, like the atmosphere in some pictures, 
still and slightly misty over every thing, with- 
out so much as stirring a leaf, destroying the 
effect of distance by making all objects, near 
and far, present the same gray-blue dimness 
of body, the same uncertainty of outline. 
However, when they had reached the summit 
of the hill, they saw a great flare in the east, 
and, almost startlingly soon, the sun leaped 
above the horizon. All the highest points of 
land were glorified. .The landscape now looked 


102 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


like a sea whose billows were phosphorescent 
with the troughs between inky black. The 
wild ducks in small flocks whirred overhead, 
going from their resting-places in La Fayette 
Lake to their feeding-places in the shallow 
weedy ponds farther up among the swamps. 

On their right as they passed, they saw a 
delightfully homelike country house withdrawn 
among luxuriant foliage. It was flanked with 
spacious barns and cotton-houses. Blooming 
orchards of peach and pear and plum trees 
clothed the hill-sides hard by. A little farther 
on a party of colored men were ploughing with 
mules. The soil they turned over was almost 
Indian red, with every appearance of incom- 
parable fertility. And now, the road rising a 
few feet higher, they had a fine bird’s-eye view 
of a shallow valley, a miniature lake, and a 
dark cypress-swamp. The foliage of the trees 
took on every tinge of green, gray, and brown ; 
the fields, mostly fresh-ploughed, were red and 
chocolate ; the sky was turquoise overhead, 
paler farther down, and rose-color at the 
horizon. 

Cauthorne and Willard forgot to regret 


SUNRISE ON THE AUGUSTINE ROAD. 103 

longer the loss of their morning nap. Such a 
sunrise and such air, with the quietly charming 
landscapes and bucolic accompaniments, more 
than compensated for the fleeting inconven- 
ience. 

For much of the way a neglected hedge of 
Cherokee rose-bushes, or rather vines, showed 
upon one or the other side of the road, the 
blooms shining fair and sweet amid the 
dark tangles. The yellow jasmine was every- 
where. Its perfume filled space. In spots the 
ground was blue with violets. 

“ The planters here once indulged the belief 
that a fence could be made of these rose-vines,” 
said Vance. “Those tangled rows are the 
result.” 

“What a beautiful theory it was!” exclaimed 
Willard. “Just imagine a plantation in this 
favored climate, enclosed with a hedge of roses 
and jasmines ! Take this place, for instance,” 
he continued after a pause, waving his hand 
toward a broad stretch of level fields : “ fling 
round it such a fence, plant odorous white 
lilies in the pond yonder, build a model cottage 
in among those oaks on the hill, and then ” — 


104 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ What then ? ” demanded Cauthorne as Wil- 
lard hesitated. 

“Why, swing in a hammock, and listen to 
the mocking-birds, and sip scuppernong, and 
be a poem ! ” was the reply. 

Col. Vance laughed as a man does who likes 
poetry, but who does not believe it is the whole 
of life. 

Cauthorne’s face relaxed into an expression 
of friendly contempt as he said, “ Have you 
a lily in your button-hole, Willard ? ” 

There was a gush of music from the dewy 
trees, a swell of wind from the Gulf, a throb 
of warmth, a deepening of colors, a lessening 
of perfumes : the sunrise was accomplished. 
Day was in full bloom. 

“ If we had come out this morning to fight 
a duel, it would be over about now,” said Wil- 
lard, after some moments of silence. 

“ What an inconsequent remark ! ” exclaimed 
Cauthorne. 

“I don’t know about that,” was the re- 
joinder. “I have always coupled duelling with 
Southern life. It is one of the accepted char- 
acteristics of sun-land society.” 


SUNRISE ON THE AUGUSTINE ROAD. 105 

“ I hope,” said Col. Vance gravely, “ that the 
great duel lately fought between the North and 
the South has forever driven from the hearts 
of men in this country all love of mortal combat.” 

“Amen,” said Cauthorne. 

Willard’s mind was in a skipping mood. 
The question of duelling thus peremptorily 
settled, he said, — 

“ Since I have been here I have been every 
day more and more impressed with the great 
error into which I had fallen, as to the topog- 
raphy of Florida. Somehow I had always in- 
dulged the idea of one vast tropical plain 
covered with trees and reeds and bay-thickets, 
half-submerged in water. I never dreamed of 
a picturesque hill-country like this. The most 
beautiful parts of Liombardy are not more rest- 
ful, and not nearly so suggestive of artistic 
effects.” 

“ Why are you not prosperous here ? ” said 
Cauthorne, turning from Willard to Vance. 
“You certainly have the most fertile country 
in the South.” 

“Our curse, sir, will be apparent to you 
when you have closely studied our agricultural 


106 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

situation, and the conditions of our connection 
with the great centres of commerce. We are 
isolated. We have but one railroad ; and its 
interests are against us, and in favor of the 
orange-region up the St. John’s River. Con- 
sequently we have no means of rapid transit 
for our products. But our great curse, and I 
say it with the deepest sympathy for that un- 
fortunate race, is the negro. In this county, 
for instance, there are twenty thousand inhabit- 
ants : less than four thousand are whites ; the 
rest are illiterate, indolent, worthless negroes. 
Viewed in an agricultural way, here is a dead 
element, comprising more than four-fifths of 
our population, — an element which used to be 
the motor of our immense prosperity. Once 
it was a thing of vast material moment : now 
it has ceased to be accounted as of value ex 
cept in a doubtful political sense. To make 
it plain, suppose all your teeming hordes of 
agricultural laborers in the North should sud- 
denly lay down the plough, and quit your fields 
for political pursuits ! At the end of five or 
six years how would your prairies compare with 
our plantations here ? ” 


SUNRISE ON THE AUGUSTINE ROAD. 10 7 


To Cauthorne’s mind this was a new way of 
putting the facts. He would have been glad 
to press the question further; but they had 
reached the gate of Vance’s plantation, and 
the matter in hand was to prepare for the day’s 
sport. 


xo8 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


CHAPTER X. 


A LADY IN BROWN AND GOLD. 

N the afternoon of the day preceding that 



of the quail-hunt, Willard had brought a 
thick portfolio of sketches from his room for 
Lucie to examine. 

“You need not look at them now,” he said, 
sitting down by her on a long settle under a 
tree near the house. “You may keep the 
book, and run through it at your leisure. I 
want you to talk with me at present.” 

“ I can listen,” she said ; “ but I fear I have 
nothing interesting to say.” 

“You might answer questions.” 

“ Not hard ones,” she said, shaking her head, 
and smiling archly like a little girl. 

“ Oh ! I could not think of troubling you with 
any thing difficult,” he said. “ To begin with, I 
should like to know something about Col. Vance.” 


A LADY IN BROWN AND GOLD. 109 

For a minute she was silent; then, ‘‘Papa 
could tell you,” she' simply said. 

Willard looked steadily at her. Her profile 
was as calm and sweet as if nothing had been 
said. Was this art ? He could not tell. After 
all, it might be that she cared nothing for 
Vance. He had been chafing a day or two 
over the discovery, as he thought, of a lover- 
like relation between them. It may be asked 
why he cared. If the question had been asked 
of him, he would not have answered. He knew 
that he was delighted with her, that she im- 
pressed him differently from other beautiful 
girls ; that she was delightfully enigmatical ; 
that she was just what his father had described 
a Southern girl as being, and much more ; but 
he was cool-headed enough to decide that he 
was not in love. All the same a strangely 
tender feeling crept over him, as he looked at 
her: this he was deliciously conscious of. He 
had never felt precisely the same thing before. 
It was not passion, he was sure of it. He re- 
called his foolish suddenness of giving way to 
something of this sort at t4ie veranda-steps 
on their return from the cemetery the other 


I 10 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


evening, and how adroitly he had avoided being 
caught. He tried to put this and that to- 
gether, and, in a way, to analyze his condition. 
The result was elusive. 

“Nc doubt your father could tell me,” he 
said presently ; “ but what if I would rather 
have it from you ? And, besides, I don’t care 
about hearing of Col. Vance’s political stand- 
ing and prospects, his financial condition, or 
his war-record.” 

She turned her eyes, those deep, sweet, dan- 
gerous gray eyes, full upon him, and their spell 
caught him. He knew much of the world, 
he had been everywhere, he had schooled him- 
self to resist and to conquer eyes. Now, how- 
ever, all his training failed him, and in a 
moment he was lost. He said something fool- 
ish, of course. A young man always does 
under such pressure. His wits forsake him 
utterly ; and he blindly reaches out after the 
ill-defined object of his momentary desire, — 
reaches ^out as a child reaches after fire or 
the moon. Be it said to his lasting credit, 
Willard was no trifler. He worshipped beauty 
in a light, airy way, and was by nature and 


A LADY IN BROWN AND GOLD . 


Ill 


education led to posture before it ; but he was 
sincere. If his actions were often too forth- 
right, they never were any thing but innocent. 
When Lucie thus inquiringly looked at him, 
she said, — 

“ I cannot quite understand you.” 

“You must understand me,” he said, in his 
low, musical way. “There is something I so 
much want to know.” He leaned toward her ; 
but his eyes were downcast, and he showed no 
emotion. She stooped to pick up a small bit 
of blank paper which had slipped from the 
portfolio. The scarlet flower fell from her 
throat to the ground. He snatched it very 
quickly. Their heads were very close together 
as they stooped thus. The omnipresent mock- 
ing-bird was singing in the tree above them. 
A heavy braid of the girl’s black hair dropped 
forward and downward past her cheek, and lay 
for a second close to Willard’s lips. A strange 
perfume, such as Baudelaire meant to describe 
in La Chevelure , not of any flower, but sweeter 
and daintier, as if from the petals of her girl- 
hood’s bloom, floated round him. 

“I should like to know,” he all but whis- 


1 12 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


pered, “how much you think of him. Do you 
love him ? ” 

She straightened herself quickly, but did not 
answer. As though she had not heard his 
words, she said, — 

“You are going out shooting to-morrow?” 

“ Yes : who told you ? ” he replied quickly. 

She smiled, and Willard thought her lips 
grew brighter. After a little she said, — 

“I heard papa and Col. Vance speaking of it 
over their pipes and wine.” Then she glanced 
up, and added, “What do gentlemen find so 
fascinating in killing birds ? ” 

“I don’t know — don’t know,” responded 
Willard, slowly recovering as from a spell. 

Lucie did not open the portfolio until the 
next day, when a great quiet was hanging 
about the old house. Her father had gone 
down town, her aunt was sewing on the back 
veranda, her brother was out at the plantation- 
quarters ; Willard was, of course, quail-shoot- 
ing. 

She went to her favorite seat at the root of 
a broad-armed oak, and spread the book upon 
her lap. Many of the sketches were mere pen- 


A LADY IN BROWN AND GOLD . 113 

cil-notes of places, persons, and things, hur- 
riedly caught here and there in his travels ; 
but there were a number of them done in neu- 
tral washes, in crayon and in pastel, the last- 
mentioned presenting some strikingly good 
effects. 

Lucie, as she sat slowly turning the leaves, 
was herself a picture, richly brilliant and 
Southern, coming out fine and strong against 
the gray background of the huge tree-bole. 
She wore a silver-colored lawn, with white and 
scarlet ruffles at the neck and wrists. A dark 
red rose shone in her hair. Her almost brown 
complexion, her soft dark eyes, her long black 
lashes and straight brow, her red lips and pink- 
touched cheeks, gave just the colors and glows 
of the semi-tropic. Her slender, rather long, 
high-arched feet were incased in genuine kid 
shoes, showing the scarlet broidered stockings 
between the many straps, as was the prevalent 
fashion. She was slowly going through the 
portfolio, leaf by leaf, her face showing almost 
childish delight. In fact, she never before had 
enjoyed such a treat. Art-education was neg- 
lected, almost wholly, in the South before the 


1 14 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

war; since then there has been no chance to 
make amends. Hence the lack of poets and 
other artists in a region where nature is itself 
a great, passionate, dramatic poem, a vast ka- 
leidoscope of dazzling pictures. So absorbed 
was she, the approach of an old limping 
negress was not noticed until a well-known 
voice exclaimed, — 

“ De lor’, chile ! wha’ yo’ git dem poor- 
ties?” 

“ Good-morning, auntie Liza,” said Lucie, 
looking up into the fat but much-wrinkled face 
of the former slave. “How are you feeling 
this morning ? ” 

“ Oh ! tol’ble, thank you, chile. My ole back 
’ll never git well, I s’pose ; but de good Lor’ 
app’ints our days, chile. But wha’ yo’ git dem 
poorties ? ” 

“ They are Mr. Willard’s. I am only looking 
at them.” 

“Powerful nice man, dat Mr. Willard, he 
sho’ly is. Did he make dem ? ” 

“Yes, auntie.” 

“Bress my soul, now, ain’t dey nice! Jes’ 
look at dat now ! An’ dat ! Don’t you wish 


A LADY IN BROWN AND GOLD. 


*5 


Mars’ Vance could make poorties like dem, 
honey ? ” 

“ Maybe he can, auntie Liza: you don’t 
know.” 

“Nary t'ime, chile, nary time. De gentlem 
in de Souf don’t come up to de gentlem in de 
Norf in sich things.” 

“Now, auntie Liza!” said Lucie in a depre- 
cating tone, “you ought to be ashamed to take 
sides against your own folks.” 

The old negress leaned on a staff she car- 
ried, put her left hand on the small of her 
back, and, after a preliminary moan or two, 
replied, — 

“Now, honey, ye make fun ob ole Liza. I’s 
not takin’ no sides agin my folks. We’s alius 
been quality, chile, an’ you knows it ; but de 
folks up Norf dey’s smart, dey is. Dey looks 
on de freedom side ob de question.” 

“ Now, now ! ” cried Lucie with mofk severi- 
ty, “you are running off into politics.” 

“ Well, chile, s’pose I is, den what ? Ain’t 
I eighty-nine year ole ? Don’t I know what’s 
what? S’pose I got no gumption? You 
needn’t laugh : I knows you, bress yo’ sweet 


II 6 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

soul. But as I was a-sayin’, dey’s a big difF- 
ence ’tween de gentlem ob de Norf and de 
gentlem ob de Souf. ’Course I lubs de Souf 
gentlem de bes’ in a fam’ly way ; but de gen- 
tlem ob de Norf he’s de bes’ sot on de freedom 
question, an’ he see more plainer de situation 
ob de colored folks, he does. Now, f’r in- 
stance, Mr. Willard, — he meet me, an’ he 
say ‘ Good-mornin’, madam,’ same like I was 
white. But Mars’ Vance, he say, * Howdy, 
Liza,’ jes’ like I wasn’t free nor nuffin’. I 
takes notice ob de difference ; an’ I says to my- 
self, 4 Liza, dis is too plain : de gentlem f’om 
de Norf is de smartest, he sho’ly is.’ ” 

Lucie had not kept the run of the old wo- 
man’s talk. Her mind was busy with the 
sketches. At length she came to one which 
fairly startled her. It was a girl with long 
gold-yellow hair, and amber eyes, standing with 
one fair #and resting on the shaggy head of a 
dog, the other hand clasping a white lily. The 
drapery of the figure was old-gold, and its atti- 
tude and facial expression gave the idea of 
pleased expectancy. It was a sketch of rare 
power and beauty, done somewhat in the style 


A LADY IN BROWN AND GOLD. II 7 

of Whistler, a study in brown and gold, evi- 
dently taken from a model of most striking 
loveliness. Lucie gazed at it in silence, actu- 
ally trembling in rapt admiration of its strange 
sweetness and splendor. 

“ Hoop - ee - too ! ” exclaimed auntie Liza : 
“dat’s ’is sweetheart, sho’s yo’ born, chile. 
She’s mighty poorty too.” 

“ Oh, no, auntie! it isn’t his — it isn’t his — 
that is, it isn’t any one at all. It’s just a fancy 
picture, you know,” Lucie hastened to say, still 
holding it out before her, and still trembling. 

“ Neber you fool yo’self, honey : de business 
is too plain. No gentlem gwine to tote dat 
picter roun’ ’dout he lub de gal. It’d be agin 
natur’ mos’ly, an’ you know dat’s a fac’.” 

“ He may have sketched it from one of the 
London beauties he so often speaks about,” 
Lucie said to herself, giving no ear to auntie 
Liza’s prattle. 

“Took it f’om his sweetheart, dat’s what he 
did; and she mus’ be de poortiest gal alibe, she 
sho’ly must.” 

Lucie could not take her eyes off the beauti- 
ful form and fascinating face. Deep feelings 
were stirring in her. She murmured, — 


1 1 8 A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 

“ He has been used to meeting and talking 
with girls like that. How poor and plain and 
ugly I must look ! ” 

“Not a bit ob dat, chile: you neber looked 
ugly to nobody. Mr. Willard no fool. He 
done tuck in all yo’ bearin’s ; an’ ef you wusn’t 
done ’gaged to Mars’ Vance, he go for ter take 
yo’ in out’n de wet ’mejetly, he sho’ly would. 
He’s smart, chile, he is, fur a fac’.” 

“Who said I was engaged to Col. Vance, 
auntie ? ” said Lucie quickly. 

“Well, ain’t ye?” cried old Liza, almost 
spitefully. 

Lucie* did not reply. She reluctantly put the 
sketch in its place, and closed the portfolio. 
She had had a peep into a new world, and the 
spell of its fascination was upon her. She 
looked up at the dull, brown-gray walls of the 
old homestead, and all around at the unkempt 
trees and shrubs. For the first time, some- 
thing like a realization of the narrowness and 
poverty of her life fell into her heart, and sank 
to the bottom like lead. For a long time she 
sat in a drooping posture, \yith an intense look 
of longing in her eyes. 


IN THE QUAIL-COVER . 


119 


CHAPTER XI. 

IN THE QUAIL-COVER. 

HLLARD had never tasted a Southern 
* ^ corn-cake, and it was somewhat a nov- 
elty even to Cauthorne. Indeed, the lunch 
at Vance’s plantation-house was altogether a 
strange, and, upon the whole, an enjoyable 
meal. Besides the corn-cakes, there were thinly- 
cut broiled bacon, fried sweet-potatoes, broiled 
perch, coffee, and scuppernong wine, all served 
at once by a colored woman, whose homespun 
dress and headkcrchief were as white as snow. 
The dining-room was a very large one, ar- 
ranged with reference to warm weather, with 
three sides composed of Venetian blinds, so 
that it could, at pleasure, be turned into an 
open veranda. Now it was but partially closed. 
From where Cauthorne and Willard sat side by 
side at the table, they could see to the farthest 
hills on the horizon in two directions. 


120 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


It was past ten o’clock when they had fin- 
ished their coffee ; and by the time their cigars 
were burned out, and the dogs brought up, the 
sun had nearly touched the meridian. But the 
cover was near by ; and, once they had started, 
it was not long till they had scattered a fine 
bevy of quails in a field of low weeds and 
sedge-grass. Cauthorne and Vance each made 
a fine double-shot, bringing four birds to bag. 
Willard did not lift his gun. He was, in fact, 
examining some lily-pads in a little pool, at 
the time the birds rose. It was rather dry for 
the dogs’ noses. They did not work well. 
The quail took to wing, too, at great distances ; 
but Vance and Cauthorne cut them down all 
the same. Willard loitered by the thin, tan- 
gled hedges of Cherokee-rose and yellow jas- 
mine, now and then putting aside his gun to 
whip from his pocket a little sketch-book and a 
pencil, as some new combination of foliage or 
some striking bit of landscape attracted his 
artistic notice. He heard the sudden, spiteful 
reports of his companions’ guns, now here, 
now there, as they zealously followed the 
frightened bevies. The dog set apart for his 


IN THE QUAIL-COVER. 


121 


use had soon deserted him, to go join the 
huntsmen of birds instead of staying with the 
sketcher of flowers. He did not note the l6ss. 
The mild sunshine fell upon him, the blue sky 
beamed overhead, the perfumes hung round 
him. In the course of his slow rambling, he 
came upon a high bluff overlooking a miniature 
lake. He cast himself upon the ground under 
some pine-trees, amid a scattered growth of 
sand-lilies. Here he lay and dreamed, dimly 
conscious all the time of the roaring guns 
and the sweet smells. Tbe spirit of the South 
was taking deep hold of him. Ragged ne- 
groes ploughing in an adjacent field were sing- 
ing “ Dixie,” their voices ringing clear and 
high. Now and then the words of the song, 
intensely Southern, with the incongruous con- 
ditions accompanying them, grated harshly on 
his ear. It seemed so strange that these freed- 
men could sing at all, much less with such feel- 
ing, that red-hot secession song. A small, 
sluggish alligator crept out of the lake, and 
stretched itself on a log in the sun. Willard 
sketched it in all its realistic ugliness, with 
some saw-grass and spatter-dock showing in 


122 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


the background. Then a snake-bird came 
wriggling along in the clear water, its head 
above the surface, its meandering neck and 
lean body below. It looked like a winged ser- 
pent, a veritable water-dragon. ^ This he also 
caught in a slight sketch, showing some broad- 
leaved riparian weeds, and tall, slender, reed- 
grass stalks. The guns were now far in the 
distance, their softened reports rising along 
the horizon with nothing in them to startle the 
wild things of the lake. Now and then beau- 
tiful wood-ducks, in all the glory of variegated 
plumage, sailed by on the open water from 
one to another thicket of bay or cypress, 
their trim bodies suspended in duplicate below 
them. A great white-breasted, forked-tailed 
hawk skimmed the lake’s surface like a giant 
swallow. Over against where he sat, a little 
brook fell into the lake ; near the current a 
belted halcyon swung on a magnolia-bough, 
now and then cackling loudly, or dropping into 
the water with a plash, and coming out bright 
and dry, \vith a fish in his mouth. Willard, in 
all his rambles, had never happened upon a 
spot so full of the spirit of poetry. The little 


IN THE QUAIL-COVER . 


123 


landscape was primeval. The air was more 
ancient and pastoral, with those half-savage 
negro voices ringing down it, than any line of 
Theocritus. But what were those voices sing- 
ing ? The tune had changed, and the words, — 

“ Oh, de Tallahassee girl she’s a charmer, 

She sings like de mocking-bird in May,” — 

entering his ears, seemed to diffuse themselves, 
like some potent charm, all through him. Her 
form and her face, who was the only Tallahas- 
see girl for him, came into the field of his 
inner vision, with all their simple • grace and 
inexpressible beauty. Of late she had been 
too much in his mind ; sleeping or waking, he 
could not get her quite out of sight. He was 
not happy away from her. 

Col. Vance and Cauthorne, during this time, 
had been enjoying such sport as rarely comes, 
even to the most inveterate roamer by flood 
and field. It is no dressed-up story, it is 1 . fact, 
that the Tallahassee region literally teems with 
quail ; and our friends found them at their 
best. Up to their twentieth bird neither had 
missed. On his twenty-first Cauthorne failed ; 


124 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


and Vance, after waiting to see if the bird was 
hit, fired, and cut it down at sixty yards, thus 
doing what, in field-parlance, is known as “wip- 
ing the eye ” of one’s competitor. 

“It was the fault of the loading of your 
shell, sir,” said Vance, bowing apologetically : 
“it scattered the shot too widely.” 

“ You are too generous,” replied Cauthorne 
with a smile. “ It was a failure to cover the 
bird, or rather to allow for flight : I aimed too 
far ahead of it.” 

“ I did not like the sound of the shell, nev- 
ertheless,” • insisted Vance: “it was a dead, 
puffy report.” 

They were now on a high, windy hill, — there 
are so many such in the region, — and were 
wading knee-deep in thin gray weeds. The 
birds were springing up, singly, or two or three 
together, and with swift flight were swinging 
over the brow of the hill, and plunging into a 
thicket in the ravine below. It required quick 
work to hit them. Cauthorne saw that he for 
once had met more than his match with, the 
gun. The ease with which Vance covered the 
hurtling game was comparable to nothing but 


IN THE QUAIL-COVER. 


125 


the finest exhibitions of Paine or Carver. As 
yet he had not so much as winged a bird. 
Every one had dropped short off from its 
flight, stopped dead on the instant of his firing. 
Cautixorne missed again, a very difficult bird 
which got up behind him, and to his right, fly- 
ing low, and whisking behind a tall tuft of 
briers just as he drew trigger. Vance could 
have killed it, but did not try. He only turned 
to Cauthorne, and said, — 

“ You ought not to have risked that. It was 
not fair to you.” 

Of course Cauthorne admitted to himself 
that he was beaten ; but the reader is respect- 
fully asked to recall an instance where any 
man ever directly and orally confessed his infe- 
riority to any other living or dead man, when 
it came to a test of marksmanship. There is 
always somewhere to lay the blame of defeat 
so as not to touch the skill of the defeated 
party. Cauthorne thought of a thousand rea- 
sons why he had not done better, but he could 
see no special reason why Vance had done so 
well. He did not know that he was pitted 
against the best shot in Florida, which would 
mean the best in America, or the world. 


126 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


When their shells were all expended, and 
they were trudging back to the plantation 
house loaded with game, a single quail sprang 
from a tuft of grass at their feet, and went 
whizzing away in a straight line from them. 
Quick as thought Vance snatched a small pis- 
tol from a back pocket, levelled it, and fired. 
To Cauthorne’s utter amazement, the bird fell : 
he turned, and looked his astonishment. 

Vance smiled. 

“ I beg pardon,” he said : “the pistol is not a 
gentleman’s sporting weapon ; but I assure you 
I have long used it as such. It must look a 
little brigandish to you, sir, to see me using it. 
I hope you are not — not offended.” 

“ No,” said Cauthorne ; and then he added 
with enthusiasm, “You are the finest shot I 
ever saw. This last was superb.” 

“ Thank you, sir : you are kind to say so 
much,” replied Vance. 

They looked at each other as if they were 
going to shake hands, but they did not. 

Willard had reached the house ahead of 
them. Dinner was ready. It consisted of 
three courses, — soup and baked bass (bass are 


IN THE QUAIL-COVER. 


1 27 


called trout in Florida) ; boiled ham and vege- 
tables and corn-bread ; a big sweet-potato pie, 
with brandy sauce, and a lemon-custard ; scup- 
pernong wine, coffee. Some of the table-ware 
attracted Willard’s close attention. The plate 
upon which his wedge of lemon-custard was 
brought was at least sixty years old, white, 
decorated in dark indigo-blue. The sauce-jug 
matched it. A water-pitcher was white, print- 
ed with pink. The huge blue platter bearing 
the ham showed the genuine Wedgwood dec- 
oration. The squat sugar-bowl had deep-blue 
roses on a pale-blue ground. • The cream -jug 
was egg-shell china, decorated with crude pale- 
green flowers. 

“What extremely beautiful old ware you 
have, Col. Vance ! where did you find it ? ” he 
asked. 

“What, these? Oh! they are Mr. John’s, 
my man who oversees my freedman renters. 
I suppose he has picked them up here and 
there,” replied Vance, without exhibiting any 
interest. “Mr. John lives here, but is not at 
home to-day. He is down at St. Mark’s. He 
is an excellent man, an old bachelor, a queer 


128 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


case ; well educated, sir, and a great reader, 
but queer. He is forever collecting all manner 
of old things. He some years ago found a 
pretty well preserved suit of Spanish armor, 
out here in a field of mine which he was hav- 
ing ploughed unusually deep. He sent it 
North.” 

“ These pieces are Wedgwood ; that is Adams 
ware ; this is Hall ; the sugar-bowl I cannot 
make out; the cream-jug is of a rare pattern 
and print, extremely fine,” Willard ran on. 
“All are valuable. That platter is worth a 
hundred dollars. ” 

He was enthusiastic, but he could get 
no sympathetic response from Cauthorne and 
Vance. The latter merely said, — 

“I see such things now and then in the 
negro-cabins, — old odds and ends given to the 
freedmen by the whites.” 

In the cool shadows of the evening they re- 
traced their way to Tallahassee ; Col. Vance 
telling them, as they went along, how this 
Augustine road was built by one man and his 
slaves, under a contract with the government, 
many years ago. Forty thousand dollars was 


IN THE QUAIL-COVER. 


129 


the price, he thought ; and the man worked 
about two hundred negroes. 

They met, along the road, freedmen return- 
ing from Tallahassee to their cabins in the 
hills. Some of them were walking, some were 
riding mules ; but the greater number had little 
carts, to each of which a single ox was har- 
nessed. A few were drunk and noisy. All 
looked squalid and pinched, or greasy and list- 
less. The driver of the carriage sat upon his 
high seat, proud and stiff, passing his .less 
fortunate fellows by without a nod or a look. 
Once, however, he deigned to speak to one. 
It was at the crossing of the little brook here- 
tofore mentioned as running at the foot of the 
hill east of the city. As the carriage-horses 
entered the water at one side, a tipsy negro 
drove in his one-ox-cart on the other side. 

“ Cl’ar de way dar fur de gentlem carriage, 
yo’ lazy goober-grabbler ! ” shouted the aristo- 
crat. “ What fo’ yo’ stop dar ! Whip up dat 
calf, an’ git to yo’ place. I got no time ter fool 
wid you ! ” 

The gentlemen in the carriage smiled at 
each other. They had seen such things in a 
higher walk of life. 


130 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


The sun was quite down long before they 
reached the city ; but a rosy flush still lingered 
in the west as they whirled along the level top 
of the Capitol hill. 

Cauthorne got out at the hotel, and went to 
his room deeply impressed with the day’s his- 
tory. He thought it would be good material. 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


131 


CHAPTER XII. 


CAUTHORNE GETS INTO GREEN PASTURE. 



HE party at Judge La Rue’s was at first 


A spoken of by its projectors as a mere lit- 
tle gathering-together of a few friends in an 
informal way; but the judge and Col. Vance 
held a council, — they were always holding 
councils ; and as the legislature was on the 
point of adjourning, and as there were some 
important matters, nearly affecting Col. Vance’s 
political desires, not quite made secure, it was 
thought proper to enlarge the bounds and in- 
crease the formalities of the social affair to the 
full extent of Tallahassee precedents. For a 
day or two the preparations went quietly but 
vigorously on. Some innovations were in- 
dulged : among them a hundred or so of Chi- 
nese lanterns were brought from Jacksonville, 
to be hung in the trees on the grounds. The 


132 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL,. 


old house was shaken up and renovated, so to 
speak, its windows and doors thrown open from 
roof to basement. Floral decorations were 
used unsparingly. 

Willard, furtively alert, watched the proceed- 
ings with a curious eye. Lucie fluttered about 
like a bird, — a very stately young bird, — leav- 
ing wherever she went a trace of her fine sense 
of the fitness of colors and arrangement. No 
professional florist was called in. The house- 
hold relied upon itself for every thing. There 
was made a united, systematic effort to cast 
poverty into the darkest corners for the time 
being, and to bring out something like the old 
splendor where the lights were strongest. A 
dozen or so of colored maids and youths were 
collected for servants, and carefully advised of 
their duties. 

Col. Vance came every day, but, greatly to 
Willard’s comfort, did not pay much attention 
to Lucie. Political intrigue seemed to be rife 
among the legislators. A carpet-bagger of 
great ability, and utterly unscrupulous, was 
striving to sow the seeds of discontent in the 
dominant party, with a view to planting him- 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


133 


self in the Senate of the United States two 
years hence. If this scheme should succeed, it 
would effectually destroy Vance’s chance for 
the governorship. His only hope lay in hold- 
ing his friends together on the measures about 
to be acted upon. Judge La Rue, though old, 
was a power. His whole life had been given 
to moulding the political and social action of 
Tallahassee and the State. The real though 
well-disguised object of the party about to be 
given was to call together a number of the 
legislative magnates under the judge’s roof, 
with a view to influencing them in a certain 
direction. Of course Lucie did not dream of 
this phase of the affair ; and, if her aunt was 
in the secret, she did not let fall a hint of it. 

Willard, by a very natural though rather 
egotistical mistake, took it for granted that the 
party was, in a way, meant to do him honor as 
a guest ; and, on this score, the little ingenious 
turns with which Lucie overcame ugly obsta- 
cles in the way of her preparations challenged 
his deepest admiration. Not that he was so 
supremely selfish : he associated himself with 
Lucie as a true man will associate himself 


i.34 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


with a lovely girl, in a way too tenderly rever- 
ent to deserve criticism. He even bore a hand 
in the final touches of preparation, giving val- 
uable suggestions respecting the hanging of 
the gay lanterns, and the arrangement of cer- 
tain improvised seats for the so-called lawn. 
Late in the afternoon of the last day, when all 
was done, he called Lucie to come and sit by 
him on one of these seats. 

“You must be tired, with all your running 
here and there. Come and tell me who is to 
be here to-night, and how one is expected to 
behave. It has been months since I was at a 
party, and I begin to feel rusty.” He said this 
in such an easy, matter-of-fact way, that Lucie 
was at a loss how to answer him. He crossed 
his feet, and, leaning slightly backward, gazed 
up into the dusky foliage overhead, one arm 
hanging over the back of the seat. He was a 
graceful fellow; and his trim, neatly-clothed 
form was always shown to good effect. 

“ I am not tired,” said Lucie, taking the 
space beside him ; “ but I confess to some 
anxiety. I have not told you, but this is to be 
my first party.” 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


135 


“ Oh, your debut , your coming out ! ” said 
Willard, turning his indescribably genial eyes 
quickly upon her. ‘‘How are you going to 
dress ? ” 

“You make light of me. I am too old for a 
dtfaitante. I meant to say that this is the first 
party we have given since — since the war ; or, 
at least, on so considerable a scale. I feel 
quite incompetent.” 

“ Oh ! you’ve nothing to do but to meet the 
guests at the door, and help your aunt smile,” 
he said, in his light, ready way. “ I’ll lighten 
your burthen all I can by obtruding myself in 
every manner possible.” 

She laughed a little : she never laughed 
much. The Southerners are not a laughing 
people. It is this that gives much of the dig- 
nity for which they are noted. They are witty, 
not humorous, with a decided aversion for any 
thing like hysterical expression of delight or 
anger. In the North everybody smiles, nearly 
everybody laughs, upon the slightest provo- 
cation. So often these smiles are thin and 
meaningless, caught in a network of weary 
wrinkles : the laugh is rarely genuine, except 
in rustic circles. 


136 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The evening shadows began to fall. One of 
the servant-boys went around lighting the lan- 
terns. Soon the gray old house was trans- 
formed. It looked like a palace. The dense 
foliage, the gnarled boughs, and long moss, 
caught something from the colored lights which 
added to their charm. The wind seemed to be 
wandering about indefinitely, swaying things 
very gently in all directions. 

Willard went up to his room to dress. Pres- 
ently the guests would be arriving. 

Col. Vance and Cauthorne came early, the 
very first, and together. Since the day with 
the quails they had been great friends. Wil- 
lard saw them from his window, and went 
down. His first thought was : What a hand- 
some fellow Cauthorne is, and what a striking 
couple he and Miss Lucie La Rue would be ! 

And now, as if in answer to a preconcerted 
signal, the guests came pouring in. It was 
something worth while in Tallahassee to go to 
a party at the La Rue place. The older ones 
of the best class of inhabitants remembered the 
ante-bellum gatherings there, and the younger 
ones had heard the older ones tell about them 


INTO GREEN PASTLRE. 


137 


Many persons were startled by being invited 
It was a very late-coming recognition. This 
part had been managed by Col. Vance. The 
house filled, the grounds filled. It was, to 
both Willard and Cauthorne, a beautiful and 
in some regards a novel spectacle. It was, to 
their minds, typical. It was not only charac- 
teristic of the climate and people : it was a 
striking index and exponent of a stage of so- 
cial change, of which the artist and the novel- 
ist had much need. Some of the older ladies 
appeared in superb toilets, slightly changed in 
details from those of twenty years ago. Even 
the young girls, many of them, were habited 
in sweetly picturesque dresses of antiquated 
stuffs, the gowns of their mothers and grand- 
mothers, made over in the latest fashion-plate 
style. The elder Miss La Rue knew all these 
dresses. She had seen them in the good old 
times, when Herman Willard senior used to 
be the life of cotillion-parties much more select 
than this upon which his son was so compla- 
cently but interestedly gazing. 

A large number of kraight, stately old men 
were present, bowing low to the ladies, and 


138 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


talking with an ease and elegance scarcely 
found elsewhere. The young men were mostly 
tall, almost lean, and sunburned ; but they 
bore themselves in the style of their fathers, 
with a high head and a courtly formality of 
look and gesture which brought a frequent 
smile to Willard’s lips and eyes. 

The music was good ; but the colored violin- 
ists and flute-players would now and then fall 
into a barbaric strain, and shake out their 
notes in something like jig-time, with much 
bowing of woolly heads and rapt upturning of 
shining white eyes. 

The night air was cool, but not disagreeable ; 
the windows were all open ; fans fluttered as 
though it were midsummer. 

Col. Arthur Vance went among the throng- 
ing guests, according to each one some special 
favor of his wit, making each one feel that the 
choicest tidbit had been cast to him or her. 
To the old men in ancient broadcloth dress- 
coats and white vests, he was particularly and 
deferentially polite ; to the plump, middle-aged 
ladies he showed great attention ; to the young 
men he was jovially stately in his address ; and 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


139 


to the young ladies he was knightly in his ad- 
miring gentleness and grace. 

Cauthorne, who always seized what the gods 
gave him, let no opportunity pass to enjoy 
Lucie’s presence and companionship. She was 
at her loveliest. Her dress elsewhere, and 
under different circumstances, might have been 
open to criticism ; but it was beautiful, and 
gave full play to her style of beauty. It was an 
indescribable old brocaded white satin, trimmed 
in old lace. It was a family treasure, dating 
back many years. She had a necklace of 
pearls, white and -black alternating, which was 
clasped with a curious red-amber seal in front. 
Her black hair was arranged low upon her 
forehead, and coiled just above her neck be- 
hind, with a scarlet flower or two for con- 
trast. The excitement of the occasion had 
given an under-glow to her cheeks, showing 
through the soft Southern skin like mild, 
smouldering sun-heat through a morning mist. 
Cauthorne walked with her for a heavenly min- 
ute or two under the trees, in the light of the 
lanterns. She had thrown a small scarlet 
shawl around her neck and over her head. 


140 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


Her deep, sweet eyes shone upon him with 
bewildering power. Willard came meeting 
them with a laughing, shapely blonde upon 
his arm. He darted a keen glance at Cau- 
thorne. The girl was exquisitely dressed in 
some clinging blue stuff, and bore herself as 
one used to society, and honestly confident of 
herself. 

When they had passed, “ Who is the young 
lady ? ” Cauthorne asked. 

“ It is Miss Cornell, of Indianapolis, Ind.,” 
said Lucie : “ isn’t she beautiful ! ” 

“Yes, a handsome girl ; but I like your style 
better.” He said this in such a matter-of-fact 
way, with not even a flattering intonation, that 
she was not troubled. 

“ Oh ! I suppose that is because so many 
Northern girls are fair,” she replied, in the 
same tone. 

“ I don’t know. There are dark girls and 
dark girls, — brunettes and brunettes,” he said ; 
“but you are not exactly dark or a brunette.” 

“I certainly am not a blonde,” she said 
naively. 

If Willard had been in Cauthorne’s place, he 


INTO GREEN PASTURE . 


141 

would have wrung in some .extremely clever 
fancy or other. But the fair-haired, stalwart 
novelist was not a sentimentalist in his talk. 
He was more a brusque soldier, a business-like 
war-correspondent, a plain, strong, rather pe- 
culiar man. He suddenly changed the sub- 
ject. 

“ You find my friend Willard a charming'Yel- 
low, of course,” said he, stopping before a rus- 
tic seat, as if tempted to accept its offer of 
comfort. 

“Yes: he knows so much, has been to so 
many places, is so ready to impart nice gleams 
of his knowledge. I like him very, very much, 
indeed.” 

Cauthorne tried, but he could not read her 
face. It was placid, and sweet, and warm, and 
sincere, and bewilderingly lovely ; but he could 
not go below its surface. She was either very 
wise, or very simple and natural, or both ; or' 
neither. 

Her duties called her away too soon. She 
left him standing in the flickering lantern-light, 
gazing steadfastly at the spot where she had 
been. A sleepy mocking-bird was twittering 


142 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

its night-song somewhere down in the farther 
tangles of the grove. 

Willard with Miss Cornell found himself 
quite at ease. She was what all well-educated 
Western girls are, very interesting and very 
amusing, ready to express her opinions, good- 
natured, sweet-voiced, strong in body and 
mind. She had been a month in Tallahassee, 
she said, and her round-trip ticket was about 
expiring. She would go home next week. 
She liked Tallahassee, found it really delight- 
ful, but would prefer Jacksonville or Fernan- 
dina, on account of society. 

“ Do you not like the society here ? ” said 
Willard, betrayed by her frankness into asking 
such a question. 

‘‘Oh, yes, indeed! but there is so little of 
the chic and movement of the other places 
here. I don’t care to dream away every day in 
the week. I like life that lives, and sings, and 
laughs. At Jacksonville and Fernandina one 
meets Northern people at every turn, and all is 
wakefulness and activity.” 

“But one misses the genuine old Southern 
spirit, and — and — flavor, so to speak,” sug- 
gested Willard. 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


143 


“Very true; but, after all, one ean well 
afford to miss those things now, don’t you 
think ? ” 

Willard hesitated for a moment before re- 
sponding, then he said, — 

“ The men here are not so clever and inter- 
esting to you, then, as the women are to me. 
I find the Southern girl charming beyond ex- 
pression.” 

“ Yes, Miss Lucie La Rue is,” she quickly 
rejoined; “but all the girls are not Lucie La 
Rues, by any means.” 

“ But the young men ? ” he insisted. 

“ Oh ! I am not critical or ill-natured, I hope ; 
but if one could get them to be less stilted 
and over-polite ! They speak to one as if they 
feared their breath would blow one away. 
When I was in Boston ” — 

Just then a tall, dark young fellow with a 
drooping mustache came to claim her for the 
dance. He bowed very low, with his hand on 
his breast, murmured lower, and with the air of 
a king led her away. Willard was profoundly 
amused. 

Judge La Rue was an alert and diplomatic 


144 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


host. He managed to come near being every- 
where at once, but without any suggestion of 
haste or effort. He held little side conferences 
with members of the legislature. In talking 
to them he arched his gray eyebrows, and made 
graceful gestures with his long, sinewy hands. 
To certain legislators, who were suspected of 
backsliding from the good old faith, he was 
especially attentive, taking wine with them, 
one at a time, in a niche of the dining-room, 
and taking hold of each one’s arm in a lofty, 
familiar way. 

Young La Rue stood leaning on his crutches, 
a silent, rather gloomy, and wholly pathetic 
picture, taking little part in the affair. He had 
left all his real self upon the field of Chicka- 
mauga with his leg, the fingers of his left hand, 
and four brothers who fell there. 

The elder Miss La Rue was quite as ubiqui- 
tous as her brother, and even more successful 
as a manager, for she possessed the gift of 
smiling very sweetly. She said “my dear,” 
and “dear child” to the young ladies, she 
talked of the past with the elderly ones. Late 
in the evening, Vance came to her, and mur- 
mured in her ear, — 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 145 

“ Can’t you manage Forseythe of Escambia? 
He’s a little cool. That carpet-bagger has 
been tampering with him. I can’t afford to 
lose him : he’s a man of influence.” 

“I will try,” she replied, and passed on. 
Soon after she might have been seen leaning 
upon the arm of the gentleman from Escambia, 
and adroitly, by indirection, appealing to his 
State pride. 

“If you would like to see an exhibition of 
suppressed emotion,” said Miss Cornell, as she 
stood apart with Cauthorne, “real ultra South- 
ern emotion, just say to one of these old gen- 
tlemen that you think the seat of the State 
government will soon be removed from Talla- 
hassee to Jacksonville or Gainesville. I inad- 
vertently tried it on Judge La Rue just now.” 

“ And with disastrous result ? ” demanded 
Cauthorne. 

“ I fear so : he rubbed his hands together, 
and looked troubled away back behind his 
smile and his polite reply.” 

Later in the evening Cauthorne found him- 
self looking down upon a thin, dark, vivacious 
girl, a Miss Morey, whose father had just 


146 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


arranged a large contract with the State. She 
was petite , intelligent, witty, smart. She 
waltzed like a little whirlwind. She talked 
without effort. She was dying to go North for 
a season. She longed for Long Branch and 
Brighton Beach and White Mountains. Her 
papa had half promised her she might go next 
summer. Cauthorne recognized a freshness, 
a newness, about her, not in consonance with 
her present surroundings. She had nothing 
of that lofty sweetness of the other Tallahas- 
see girls. Afterwards he accidentally discov- 
ered that before the war her father was a poor 
miller, and that he owed his present power to 
some successful trading within the last few 
years. The family was not aristocratic. Their 
presence at the judge’s mansion upon such an 
occasion as this was due to political exigencies. 
Her father was a strong supporter of Col. 
Vance’s measures. He was here to-night, in 
shiny broadcloth and sleek hair, buttonholing 
the legislators in behalf of those very meas- 
ures. Her mother — an uneducated, tall, bony 
woman, dressed in something trimmed in 
orange — showed conspicuously among the 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


1 47 


groups of graceful dames, as she wandered 
aimlessly from place to place. 

Cauthorne exchanged Miss Morey for Lucie 
La Rue at last ; and it came into his mind to 
recall the funny little mistake she had one 
day made in bowing to him for an acquaint- 
ance. 

“Oh, you ought to have forgotten that ! I 
must have appeared very rude,” she said, pluck- 
ing a white flower as they passed near a vase. 
“You would hate me forever if you knew what 
I thought when I bowed.” 

“You make it too strong,” he said, smiling 
down upon her from his great height. “I 
must insist on being put to the test. You 
must tell me just what you thought.” 

“ You really demand it ? ” 

“Yes, earnestly.” 

“ I am afraid,” she said, tipping the flower 
against her straight, high-bred nose, and glan- 
cing slantwise up into his face. 

He stopped, and faced her. 

“Now,” he said, “I cannot wait. Tell me 
now.” 

“I thought you were Mr. Stephens, — that 


148 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

old, old gentleman who stands by papa yorn 
der.” 

Cauthorne looked, and laughed. Mr. Ste- 
phens was not 'only tall, white-haired, and old: 
he was also very ugly. 

A number of old negroes, men and women, 
who had been trusted servants of the La Rue 
household in slavery days, had come to look 
on, as had been their privilege in that happier 
time. Auntie Liza, leaning on her staff, was 
prominent. She kept up a running comment, 
addressed to her companions, as she gazed. 

“Chillen,” she said, “’tain’t no use a-talkin’. 
Disher’s jis like ole times, on’y not half like 
’em. When I was a gal an’ we had parties, dey 
wus parties to kill, dey wus. I wus up-stairs 
dressin’ waiter; and de Lor’, chillen, de dia- 
mond an’ de gole an de purrels an’ de rubies 
dey dazzled yo’ eyes ; an’ de silks an’ de satins 
and de velbet — bress de good Lor’ ! Ole 
Feginny wus moas like hebben ! ” 

Cauthorne made a note of these dark on- 
lookers, ranged in lines and groups on the edge 
of the night, where the flaring of the lanterns 
was softened into gloom ; and he thought they 


INTO GREEN PASTURE. 


I49 


added the most telling touch to the picture. 
They looked like accentuation points, or strokes 
of emphasis, dashed on the margin of the 
scene. Or they might be compared to the 
advance-guard of a benighted people halted 
in hesitating wonder in the twilight on the 
threshold of civilization and enlightenment. 

A blare of brassy music, the tramping* of 
many feet, suddenly reached the ears of the 
merry-makers at La Rue place. It was soon 
whispered around that the carpet-bagger had 
organized a counter meeting, and the negroes, 
with a band and drums, were parading the 
Streets. Then the shadowy figures on the 
verge of the lawn faded away. They had gone 
to join their color. 

Willard did one thing which was very wrong : 
he knew it was wrong all the time. He kept 
secreted about him a little sketch-block of light 
brown paper. Furtively he now and then 
slipped this out ; and, screened by a door or a 
tall pot of flowers or a curtain, he made a 
pencil caper over its surface. The result was 
some studies in bold lines, of many of the 
most striking figures and groups of the even- 


i5o 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


ing. The notes of the ladies and their drapery 
were invaluable. He did not spare Lucie. He 
made four or five sketches of her, such as he 
could dash off in thirty seconds or so, strik 
ingly life-like and expressive. The stately 
dames, and tall, trim old men, the girls in semi- 
antiquated gowns, all came in for a study. 
Wfien the guests had gone, and he sat in his 
room by a window smoking a cigarette before 
going to bed, he looked over these sketches 
with great self-complacency. 


THE GUITAR. 


15 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE GUITAR. 

' I "'HE next day Col. Vance and Cauthorne 
called together at La Rue place. They 
found Lucie and Willard on two of the rustic 
seats near the house, evidently well content to 
be thus whiling away the delightful afternoon. 
In fact, Willard had been in an artistic mood, 
and had begged the privilege of doing what he 
termed arranging an aesthetic symphony with 
Lucie as the central idea. He draped the seat 
first in the tender green-gray Spanish moss. 

“ Now lean half-wearily back,” he said. 
Then he placed a blue footstool in the fore- 
ground, and flung a scarlet mantilla over the 
arm of the seat. Her white dress and dull-red 
ribbons completed the combination. 

“You work up charmingly in a picture,” he 
said, stepping back a few paces, and looking at 
her with half-closed eyes. 


152 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The sensation of being thus sincerely appre- 
ciated in a new way was to Lucie a most fasci- 
nating thing. She had felt it several times 
since Willard had been in the household. 

“Wait a moment,” he said. He went to his 
room, and came back with a small oval fan, 
gray, with scarlet border, and a white lily for 
its centre. “ Hold that.” 

She took it. A little glow had gathered in 
her cheeks. Her lips were like a babe’s in 
their tenderness and brilliancy. Her dark gray 
eyes were deeper and darker than ever. 

Another thought struck him. He fetched 
from the grand parlor an old, curious guitar, 
and leaned it against her chair. 

“That rounds up the thought,” he exclaimed, 
clasping his hands, and smiling like a big, 
pleased boy. 

“ Now don’t move till I have done a sketch 
of you,” he added, hastily taking up some draw- 
ing materials and arranging them. His palette 
seemed mostly laid already. He fell rapidly to 
work, as one who knows just how to utilize 
every, second of a precious space of time. 
With a fine-pointed pencil he traced in the 


THE GUITAR. 


153 


whole ; then, from the little blotches of moist 
water-colors on his palette, he began laying on 
the colors, taking water from a wide-mouthed 
phial. 

Lucie sat there in a sort of dream, and she 
looked like the embodiment of the most glori- 
ous dream that ever came to man. 

It was a miniature drawing he was making. 
He was a brilliant and rapid workman. In- 
credibly soon he had done. 

The sketch-book lay open at his feet, and the 
palette was drying beside it, when Vance and 
Cauthorne arrived. He was in the midst of a 
monologue, meant to explain to her the differ- 
ence between Northern and Southern girls, as 
he viewed them. 

“Now, you,” he was saying, “are a perfect 
type of the ultra beautiful, ultra Southern 
girl.” 

She was about to reply when - they saw the 
young men coming up the walk between the 
oaks. 

Willard shook hands with his friends, and 
was about to resume his seat, when a look of 
Vance’s led him to stoop quickly, gather up the 


154 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


painting materials and the sketch, and carry 
them away to his room. At the time he did 
not think of analyzing the stare of surprise 
which he had seen in Vance’s face. It im- 
pressed him with force, however ; and when he 
returned he could not help noticing a con- 
straint and stiffness not at all usual. 

Lucie seemed unaware of this, and was in 
excellent spirits, talking more, and with more 
than her accustomed freedom. 

“ Mr. Willard has been using me as a part of 
a harmony,” she said, with one of her rare, 
sweet smiles, “ and has tried to explain to my 
untutored mind the elements of a symphony in 
colors, or something of the sort. He hurried, 
the examples away when you came, however, 
and I suspect it was a failure.” 

“ No,” exclaimed Willard, “ not a failure. It 
is the most perfect sketch I ever made. It is 
a symphony of the purest order.” 

Col. Vance looked at him steadily and quietly 
while he was speaking, an indescribable smile 
on his finely-formed mouth. 

“ May I see it ? ” he demanded, in a voice 
strangely flat and unmusical. 


THE GUITAR. 


155 


“ Oh ! some time, perhaps,” said Willard 
lightly, “when I am in an exhibiting mood.” 

“ I will see it now , if you please,” said Vance. 

Lucie darted a startled look at him as he 
spoke. Neither Cauthorne nor Willard noticed 
it. The latter filliped an old acorn with his 
thumb, and said, — 

“ I am too lazy to be troubled now. Any 
other time in the world.” 

“I saw you sketching last night.” 

Willard looked up quickly, coloring just per- 
ceptibly. Vance’s tone was not to be mis- 
taken. Nor was Willard’s look. 

Lucie took up the guitar, and swept its 
string's with her fingers. She rapidly tuned it. 

“ I am going to sing a song,” she said. A 
great white smile flared over her face. Col. 
Va ice got up, and turned himself about a time 
or two. He looked up into the trees. He 
snapped his thumb and fingers together audi- 
bly. He took a few quick steps back and 
forth. Then, “ Excuse me,” he said, slipping 
out his watch, and glancing at it, “ I had for- 
gotten. I’ve a matter of importance. I will 
explain when I can. Good-afternoon.” 


156 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


He strode rapidly away. Lucie fingered the 
strings of the guitar a little. One of them 
snapped in two with a great clang. She looked 
up as if in despair. 

“So ends the symphony,” gayly exclaimed 
Cauthorne, in the innocence of his ignorance. 

Willard took the guitar, and began to exam- 
ine to see if the string would admit of tying. 
He mended the break in silence, and handed 
the instrument back to Lucie. For a mere 
point of time their eyes met, and the light of 
their common thought flashed between them. 

“There is a little song,” said Cauthorne, 
“which charmed me the other evening. Two 
gentlemen sang it in the hotel-parlor. It is 
called ‘The Tallahassee Girl,’ or something of 
the sort.” 

“ A silly ditty, but rather sweet. I will sing 
it for you,” said Lucie, rapidly running the 
mended string up to the proper pitch. Her 
hands were very steady. 

Willard looked curiously at her, his admira- 
tion deepening with every breath. 

She dashed into the lively prelude, and at 
length began singing. Her voice could not be 


THE GUITAR. 


157 


called cultivated ; but it was a soprano of won- 
derful power and sweetness, and there was a 
feeling in it which transformed the ditty into a 
song. Before it was ended Willard had passed 
a crisis in his life. He had asked himself the 
question, Do I love her ? and immediately, 
with a leap of his heart, had answered, I do ! 

Cauthorne staid a long while, keeping Lucie 
playing most of the time. He enjoyed every 
moment to the full ; and, when at last he got 
up to go, he lingered. 

“ I want to come often : may I ? ” he said, 
holding out his hand to bid her good-by in the 
good Southern fashion. 

As soon as he was gone, Lucie sank back in 
the seat, pale, almost overcome. Now, indeed, 
she made a wonderful picture, caught in those 
gay colors. 

Willard waited for her to speak. He pre- 
tended not to notice her excitement. It was 
not long she remained silent. Suddenly rais- 
ing her head, — 

“Col. Vance is very angry,” she said; “and 
I fear you will have trouble. I know you 
will.” 


158 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

“ What is the matter with the man?” de- 
manded Willard very composedly. 

“ I really cannot tell, but I think it was the 
picture. He was in a white rage as soon as he 
saw it,” she said. “Was there any thing very 
— was there any thing at all wrong about it in 
any way ? Tell me, tell me ! ” she cried in a 
sudden paroxysm of emotion. 

“ Upon my sacred honor, no ! ” answered 
Willard. 

She rose, pressed her palms against her tem- 
ples, and turned to go into the house. She 
faltered, looked back at him, and said, — 

“ I must have time to think. Excuse me.” 

He did not try to detain her. To him all 
this grand emotion, while it was dramatic and 
picturesque, seemed almost ludicrously dispro- 
portioned to its cause. He had forgotten 
where he was. Not even the long moss, the 
magnolias, the mocking-birds, and the guitar 
could call to his mind the fact that he was in 
the old, hot, imperious, semi-mediaeval South. 
He was, however, imperfectly aware of an im- 
pending quarrel with Col. Vance, and of all the 
disagreeable things which might connect them- 


THE GUITAR. 


159 


selves with it. Viewed from his standpoint, it 
merely took the turn of a disagreement, a 
misunderstanding, a coolness, nothing further. 
Fighting was no part of the age in which Wil- 
lard lived. He had never viewed a personal 
encounter as a possibility on his plane. Such 
a thing was far below his horizon. He cor- 
rectly suspected that Vance had construed his 
action, in hurrying the sketch away to his 
room, to mean that he intended to keep it. 
But his aesthetic nature could discover no im- 
propriety, no suggestion of harm, no shadow 
of insult, in such an act or intention. He did 
mean to keep the sketch. Another thought 
outlined itself in his mind, upon which he felt 
a scruple. No doubt Vance had suddenly be- 
gun to suspect that he intended to try and win 
away Lucie. This presented a moral question 
fully within his grasp. Ought he to do this if 
he could ? He stopped, be it said to his credit, 
right in the whirl of the rosy mist of the sweet, 
powerful passion, and asked the question of 
himself. His heart was silent. His conscience 
formulated no intelligible answer. A spell 
closed around him. The breeze whispered on, 


160 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

the perfumes crept on, the mocking-birds sang 
on. He looked abstractedly at the guitar, the 
blue footstool, the festooned seat, the scarlet 
mantilla, a tiny glove. The sky above, the 
earth beneath, and all the space between them 
were filled with the influence of Lucie La Rue. 
He reached his arms toward the empty seat, 
and murmured, “You are mine, sweet Lucie, 
mine ! ” 

He was not aware that she was close beside 
him, until she said, — 

“Mr. Willard.” 


VANCE AND CAUTHORNE ARGUE. l6l 


CHAPTER XIV. 


COL. VANCE AND CAUTHORNE ARGUE THE 
QUESTION. 

HEN Cauthorne left La Rue place, he 



* * went directly to the hotel. He met 
Col. Vance, who was walking to and fro on the 
veranda, and immediately noticed that some- 
thing had gone wrong with him. The South- 
erner’s dark face was darker, and his eyes 
sterner, than usual. He carried himself stiffly 
erect, walking with something of a military 
strut. Taking Cauthorne’s arm he said, — 

“I desire a few words in private with you, 


sir. 


“ Certainly,” replied Cauthorne : “ come into 
my room.” 

They went into the hall, in the brick part of 
the hotel, turned down the first corridor to the 
left, and entered the second room on the left- 
hand side. This particularity of description is. 


1 62 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

for the benefit of those who will visit Talla- 
hassee, and stop at the old hotel. This room 
has a large window looking into the Capitol 
grounds. It has a small fireplace, and a queer 
little black wooden mantle. It has an inner 
door giving into another room north. 

When they were seated, Cauthorne produced 
a box of cigars, and matches. 

“Now,” said he, “I am quite ready for your 
confidential communications.” 

He said this lightly, thinking Vance had 
some matters to put into print, or to keep out 
of print, touching his legislative schemes. 

“Your friend Willard is no gentleman, is 
he ? ” began Vance. 

Cauthorne was lighting a cigar. He dropped 
the match, and turned his astounded face full 
upon his companion, with a suddenness that 
exaggerated his apparent excitement. 

“ I do not mean to hurt your feelings,” 
Vance added quickly, in a conciliatory tone, 
and leaning toward Cauthorne : “ I want you 
to know that I esteem you as a gentleman in 
every way. But this man Willard ” — 

“Is your equal in every respect, socially, 


VANCE AND CAUTHORNE ARGUE 1 63 


intellectually, morally, and pecuniai tly,” ex- 
claimed Cauthorne in a dry, firm tone. “ What 
do you desire to say of him ? ” 

It was Vance’s turn to be astoui ded. In 
the arrogance of his jealousy and wounded 
pride, he had taken it for granted that Cau- 
thorne Would understand at a glance how ut- 
terly, preposterously presumptuous Willard had 
been in daring to carry a sketch of Lucie La 
Rue to his room. He had never dreamed that 
any man would for a moment presume to do 
such a thing. 

Out of such trivial affairs all the daels, or 
nearly all, in high life, used to come in the 
South. It had one good effect : it made men 
very careful in matters of love. Great cir- 
cumspection was required to be used by the 
knightly youth who went courting a Southern 
maid, else he might get entangled in an affair 
of honor for nothing more heinous than a few 
delicate attentions. Even worse things than 
duels used to occur, — dreadful street-fights be- 
tween young men of the first families, when 
knives and pistols would snap and flash, and 
blood and life flow out freely. 


1 64 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRl. 


Vance did not speak immediately. He had 
not wished to wound Cauthorne. In fact, he 
very much desired to retain him as a friend. 
It was not ugly selfishness that prompted this 
feeling : it was a genuine esteem which had 
suddenly developed, due in a certain degree, no 
doubt, to Cauthorne’s strenuous efforts in be- 
half of his political measures, but more largely 
owing to Cauthorne’s gentle strength of char- 
acter and ready comradeship, his great knowl- 
edge of men and things, and his forthright 
honesty in expressing his opinions. 

“We need not go and have trouble with each 
other,” Vance said at last. “ I like you : you 
have shown yourself a gentleman, sir, and a 
true friend. It was to avoid a falling-out with 
you that I sought this interview. I knew Wil- 
lard was your friend ” — 

“ Then you should have been more guarded 
in your language to me in speaking of him,” 
said Cauthorne bluntly. 

Vance bit his lip, and slowly rolled a cigar 
between his thumb and fingers. 

“ It is an awkward thing to talk about,” he 
presently said. “ I wanted to tell you that 
Willard and I cannot get on together.” 


UAA CE AND CAUTHORNE ARGUE. 1 6 $ 

Cauthorne well knew that here was a quarrel 
about a sweetheart, but he did not even dimly 
suspect the immediate excuse for the trouble. 

“Well,” he said, “what is the matter be- 
tween you and Willard ? ” 

Vance suddenly recognized the difficulty of 
making explanation. A man in love is a child, 
and usually a very silly child. Novelists and 
poets and dramatists have tried to elevate the 
lover to the level of the hero : the trial has 
been a failure. The thing cannot be done. 
The details of any genuine courtship would 
damn any novel, poem, or play. A honeymoon 
in print would be a sort of sugar-coated Mother 
Goose. If a man loves a girl, he will get mad 
and fight if another man loves her, especially 
if, in the first instance, he is a Southern man. 

“Mr. Willard’s treatment of Miss La Rue 
is — is — his manner is — he — damn it ! Ido 
not like the way he is doing ! That’s the 
whole of it,” exclaimed. Vance. 

Cauthorne laughed outright. He saw only 
the ludicrous side. Vance’s situation did not 
touch his sympathy. As soon as he could 
leave off laughing, he said, — 


• 1 66 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“I have not heard Miss La Rue complain- 
ing. She seems very happy.” 

Vance leaped to his feet like a tiger. He 
was aflame with anger. 

“What do you mean, sir?” he cried, his 
voice husky and thin. 

“There is no doubt about my meaning,” was 
the mild response. “ Miss La Rue has the 
right to dismiss Willard from the house, and 
from her mind, if she chooses.” 

“ But I ” — began Vance. 

“But you,” interrupted Cauthorne, “have no 
right to make the first objection. Miss La 
Rue seems thoroughly capable of taking care 
of herself. If she prefers Willard to you ” — 

It was now Vance’s turn to break in. 

“But she doesn’t,” he exclaimed. 

“ Well, then, what are you going on so 
about ? ” said Cauthorne. “ If she prefers you, 
Willard is the one who will suffer, not you.” 

“ What right has he to be making portraits 
of her, and — and taking them away to his 
room ? ” cried Vance. 

“ Maybe she allowed him to. She didn’t 
look very angry,” said Cauthorne, recalling the 


VANCE AND CAUTHORNE ARGUE. 1 67 

little scene on the lawn. “She seemed in a 
charming good-hmnor. ,, 

Vance grabbed his long black mustache as if 
he would pull it out. He stared at the floor. 
He was very pale. 

Cauthorne scratched a match, and lighted a 
cigar. It was Northern phlegm versus South- 
ern egotism. 

“And all this great anger of yours has no 
solider cause than that a Northern artist has 
dared to paint a Tallahassee girl ! ” continued 
Cauthorne, in his merciless matter-of-fact tone. 

“He has taken advantage of the judge’s 
hospitable kindness, and Miss La Rue’s lack of 
worldly knowledge, and has been bewildering 
her with his infernal high-art nonsense,” said 
Vance savagely ; “ and has finally secured her 
picture to put it on sale in some New York or 
Boston gallery.” 

“Well?” said Cauthorne, his face as quiet 
as that of a sphinx. 

“No man shall live to do such a thing,” 
Vance hissed. 

“You will murder Willard, then?” 

“I will fight him.” 


1 68 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

“But he will not fight. He is a peaceful 
artist, to whom the idea of* spilling a man’s 
life-blood would be hideous.” 

“ I will make him fight,” declared Vance 
with great emphasis. 

“But you cannot,” said Cauthorne, coolly 
puffing his cigar-smoke. 

“I will show you,” rejoined Vance imperi- 
ously. 

“ I will put it differently, then : you shall 
not,” said Cauthorne ; and, as he spoke, he 
rose to his feet, confronted his companion, and 
gazed steadily into his eyes. 

“You call yourself a gentleman, and you 
are when you are free from this hereditary 
tendency to homicide,” Cauthorne continued ; 
“ but you are no more a gentleman at this mo- 
ment than a tiger is a gentleman. You are a 
brutal murderer just* now, and you know you 
are. Do you suppose I’ll let you go out of this 
room to kill my friend ? ” 

“ Stand out of my way, sir,” said Vance, put- 
ting back his hand as if to get a pistol or a 
knife. It was the old Southern style. 

Cauthorne sprang upon him like a lion, and 


VANCE AND CAUTHORNE ARGUE. 1 69 

in a second had disarmed him and dashed him 
forcibly into a chair. 

“ Sit there, colonel, until you have cooled 
off,” he said, in a sort of growling way. 

Vance strove with all his power; but that 
stalwart, determined two hundred pounds of 
bone and muscle proved too much for his slen- 
der frame to struggle against. 

“ I’m not in the least angry, colonel,” mut- 
tered Cauthorne ; “ but I’ll break every bone in 
your body if you don’t come to your senses. 
If you force me to strike you, I’ll give you 
what the boys in the English army used to term 
a 4 beastly deadener.’ Not another move, now ! ” 

Cauthorne had not taken the cigar from his 
mouth, but was talking with it compressed be- 
tween his teeth. He held Vance’s pistol in his 
left hand. 

Some one rapped at the door. 

“You keep still now : there’s a visitor, and I 
don’t want this business made public, neither 
do you.” Saying which, Cauthorne went and 
opened the door. 

A messenger entered with a telegram. Cau- 
thorne glanced at the superscription. 


170 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

“It is for you,” he said, handing it to Vance, 
who broke it open and hastily read it. 

“ My father is dying at Hot Springs, Ark.,” 
he exclaimed. He hurriedly took out his 
watch. “I can barely make the train.” 

Cauthorne stepped aside to let him pass out 
of the room, and said, — 

“ Here is your pistol. Use it on birds,” giv- 
ing him the weapon. 

Vance went away looking extremely hag- 
gard. 


A SKETCH AND A FAN. 


171 


CHAPTER XV. 

A SKETCH AND A FAN. 

Tit DILLARD turned quickly, recovering 
* * himself as from a dream, when Miss 
Lucie La Rue spoke his name so close to his 
ear. She was looking at him in a proud, hurt, 
appealing way. 

“ Will you do me a favor ? ” she said. 

“ Any you may ask,” he replied. 

“ Bring me the picture, the sketch you made 
of me.” 

“ Certainly, if you desire it.” 

“ I do desire it very, very much.” 

“ Right away ? ” he asked, unconsciously fall- 
ing into a Southernism. 

“Yes, sir, if you please.” 

“I hope you are not angry,” he said, delaying. 
“ No, oh no ! but I am right, which is much 
better. Don’t you think I am ? ” 


172 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ Perhaps so : I am slow to think you ever 
could be wrong. But be frank with me, Miss 
La Rue : why should he — why should Col. 
Vance control this thing ? ” 

Her face reddened, and she stood a moment 
in silence. She held her head a little higher, 
and her lips trembled slightly as she said, — 

“ Will you be kind enough to fetch the pic- 
ture now ? ” 

He went immediately, and without another 
word. He was gone a long time. She waited 
impatiently, idly straying around on a little 
space of the lawn, her hands crossed in front 
of her, and her eyes bent upon the ground. 
In one hand, all unconsciously, she still held 
the little fan that Willard had brought to her. 
When she chanced to notice this she let it fall 
as if it had been a dangerous thing; .but she 
stooped and picked it up again, just as he came 
down the steps with the sketch. 

“ I will exchange with you,” she said, with a 
poor little smile, holding out the fan in one 
hand, and reaching to take the sketch with the 
other. 

“It hurts me,” he said: “it gives me a real 
pang.” 


A SKETCH AND A FAN. 


1 73 


They both hesitated, half offering, half with- 
drawing. Their eyes met in a way which 
caused them both to wonder, there had come 
such a change, and so quickly. 

“I would give it to you if my life went 
with it,” continued Willard, holding the sketch 
farther toward her. It was an extravagant 
assertion, but at such a time it had the force of 
reality. It was as though he offered his life. 

“But you must not think me mean,” she 
said : “ I do not wish to be unkind, or give you 
pain.” 

“ I know, I know,” he said. “ It is what lies 
behind it all that cuts so keenly. I cannot 
bear it.” 

She did not understand him. Her face, in 
expressing perplexity, was so unique and so 
beautiful a study that the subject of their con- 
versation faded from his mind. His love for 
her leaped up like a flame. 

“ Lucie, Miss La Rue,” he continued, so 
soon as he again returned to himself, “how is 
this to end ? Do you see ? Have I any right 
to consideration ? Is he every thing ? Must I 
go at the wave of his hand ? ” 


174 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ Now you are bitter,” she responded : “ you 
do not consider. There are differences of cus- 
tom. He did not like for you to have my 
picture. He did not think it proper.” 

“ Oh ! but he would think proper for him to 
have one. He is an exception.” 

“Mr. Willard, .give me the” — 

“ Certainly : here, pardon me.” 

She almost snatched the sketch, and ran up 
the steps with it ; but she immediately re- 
turned, holding out the fan. 

“I was acting unfairly, keeping both,” she 
said, again essaying to smile, which enhanced 
her look of embarrassment. 

“Keep it: lam going away — going home,” 
he murmured huskily. 

“ Oh, no ! you must not, it would ” — 

“ Immediately,” he said, “ I must go at once. 
I came too late, I have staid too long. Lucie, 
Lucie, I love you, and I must go ! ” His voice 
had in it an infinitude of tender, hopeless trou- 
ble. He held out both hands. It was a fine 
picture they made, the lithe, strong, fair young 
man, and the dark, graceful, splendid girl, as 
they stood facing each other. The charm of 


A SKETCH AND A FAN. 


175 


youth, the magnetic power of personal beauty, 
and the influence of that indescribable element 
of sympathy which leaps from heart to heart at 
such a time, held them as if on tiptoe. And 
the wind blew gently, swaying the long moss 
and dark sprays of the oaks. The perfume of 
jasmine came, the mocking-birds sang, the lazy 
warmth of the semi-tropic crept along from the 
west, where the sun swung low; the dull old 
house seemed sleeping. 

“ No, no, not that,” she said, putting her 
hand toward him, as if to thrust back his 
words, “you must not say that ! ” 

He strove to read her meaning in her eyes. 
He bent eagerly forward, bringing his hands 
closer together. 

“ Must I go ? ” he scarcely more than whis- 
pered. “ Say, Lucie, must I ? ” 

She stood in a faltering attitude. Her color 
came and went. Her lips moved, but she 
spoke no word. Then, with a quick, resolute 
movement, she put the fan on his outstretched 
hands ; and, turning abruptly about, fled into 
the house. 

Something tinkled on the steps as she passed 


76 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


over them, and Willard saw her eye-glasses 
shining where they had fallen. He picked 
them up, and stood a while holding them. Lu- 
cie had used these so furtively that he had 
scarcely more than suspected her near-sighted- 
ness ; but he knew they were hers. He had 
seen them slipped under her scarlet waist-rib- 
bon. 

He went up to his room in a dazed, be- 
wildered mood. He tried to shake off the 
feeling, and be able to see his way clearly, but 
nothing offered save immediate departure. He 
looked at his watch. He would barely have 
time to reach the train. He sat down at the 
little table, and wrote the following : — 

“My dear Friend, — You will pardon my sudden 
flight from your house : circumstances of the most im- 
perative nature compel me. I will explain thoroughly 
when I have leisure. 

“ Hurriedly, faithfully yours, 

‘ “ Herman Willard, Jun. 

“To Judge La Rue.” 

This he left lying on the table. Hastily 
packing a small valise, and taking the cane 
Lucie had given him, he left the house, and 


A SKETCH AND A FAN 


1 77 


made his way to the railway-station just in 
time for the eastward-going train. 

A few minutes after Willard’s departure, 
Lucie received, by a special messenger, the 
following : — 

“ Dear Lucie, — Just had a telegram that my father is 
dying at Hot Springs, Ark. I leave on train going east. 
Will write you. 

“ Ever yours, 

“Arthur Vance.” 

It can easily be seen that these two 'little 
epistles caused a stir in the quiet old house. 
Miss La Rue senior was exasperated at Wil- 
lard, the judge was utterly nonplussed, Lucie 
was excited but silent. Of course nothing 
could be done but wait for the explanation. 

To Lucie the affair seemed unreal ; and she 
tried in vain to make it take some explainable 
shape, so that she could go to her father and 
her aunt, and tell them the whole of it. Down 
in her heart there was a great regret like a 
heavy stone ; there was also a sweet, tender 
consciousness of a new life, lived for a day, 
which no mischance could ever wholly drive 
out. 


i;8 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


For two or three days she went softly about 
the house, a little pale, not inclined to talk. 

Cauthorne came to see her. He was greatly 
surprised when she told him Willard was gone. 
He could hardly believe it. 

“What ever took the boy away in such a 
hurry ?” he exclaimed, more to himself than 
to her. “Are you sure he has gone back to 
his home ? ” 

“ I know nothing except what his note 
stated,” she said. 

“ What day did he leave ? ” 

“The day before yesterday, on the evening 
train.” 

Cauthorne started. 

“ Are you sure ? ” he asked. <f On the even- 
ing train ? ” 

“ I know he must have gone on that train, 
for he left the house not more than a half-hour 
before train-time.” 

“Then he and Col. Vance went on the same 
train ! ” said Cauthorne. 

“ I had not thought of that,” she exclaimed, 
and her face grew very pale. 

“ Well, I dare say nothing has come of it,” 


A SKETCH AND A FAN. 


179 


rejoined Cauthorne after a pause, “or we 
should have heard of it.” 

That very evening, after Cauthorne had gone, 
Lucie received a letter from Col. Vance, written 
from Montgomery, Ala. He would write again 
as soon as he reached Hot Springs. He said 
nothing about having seen Willard. 

Strange enough, Cauthorne got a letter from 
Willard, dated the same as Vance’s, and post- 
marked at Montgomery, in which there was no 
mention of Vance. It was a relief to know 
that they had not met and fought. It rolled a 
great weight from Lucie’s heart. She did not 
smile much ; but her eyes were not so sad and 
heavy, and her step took something of the old 
quickness and lightness again. 

Cauthorne went to La Rue place every day. 
He spent much time talking over political 
matters with the old judge. He was doing 
his utmost to forward Vance’s plans in his 
absence, and this endeared him to the old man 
and to the elder Miss La Rue. He delved with- 
the legislators, using every art, and, it is to be 
feared, some artifice, to hold them steadily 
where he needed them. 


t8o 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


When the time came for the ballot on 
Vance’s measures, it was owing to Cauthorne’s 
personal efforts, more than to any other influ- 
ence extrinsic of the Legislature itself, that 
they were, after a whole night’s struggle, tri- 
umphantly pulled through. He immediately 
telegraphed to Vance as follows : — 

“ We have won. Your policy has been vindicated. 
Both bills passed by a small majority. We staid with 
them all night. We triumphed just as the roosters 
crowed for day. 

“ Cauthorne.” 

He received the following reply : — 

“ A thousand thanks. Let us shake hands over the 
bloody chasm. 


“ Vance.” 


THE TWO GLOOMY PASSENGERS. 1 8 1 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE TWO GLOOMY PASSENGERS. 



HE train on the Jacksonville, Pensacola, 


x and Mobile Railway left Tallahassee on 
time, and went east at a moderate rate of 
speed. It wound among the hills for a few 
miles, through dark red cuts, and over deep, 
ragged ravines, then whirled out into the level 
woodlands, where the pines grew tall and 
straight. Night was coming on, with shadowy 
mists flickering above the ponds. There was a 
decided chill in the air. The two passengers, 
who took to themselves the entire hindmost 
car, muffled themselves in their light top-coats, 
drew their hats down over their eyes, and 
looked gloomy. They seemed to take no note 
of the scenery through which they were flying. 
The train sped out on Lake La Fayette, seem- 
ing to trundle over the water’s surface as on a 


182 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


glass pavement. Far away on either hand 
stretched a lily-field, the pads almost cover- 
ing the lake in places. Here and there rose 
clumps of bay, cypress, and magnolia, the last 
on the little tussock islands. Great rafts of 
ducks, seemingly unmindful of the crashing 
cars and snorting engine, were dimly seen 
floating idly on the still water, or swimming 
gracefully among the stems of the aquatic 
trees. White herons, standing straight among 
the bonnets and grasses of the shallows, shone 
like spots of snow against the dull background. 
The long moss draped the trees, hanging down 
and draggling in the water. Having crossed 
the lake, the train rushed into a densely-tim- 
bered swamp, where one might expect to see 
all manner of horrid reptiles. The under- 
growth here was like a wall on either hand. 
The smoke and steam from the locomotive fell 
heavily, and hung in great fleeces, like grizzled 
wool, upon the branches and foliage. Flat 
pine woods came next into view, and then 
broad plantations, with comfortable houses, 
and thrifty orchards of peach, pear, and plum 
trees. 


THE TWO GLOOMY PASSENGERS. 1 83 

The two passengers sat quite still, one a few 
seats in front of the other, and on the opposite 
side of the car. The brakeman, a talkative 
and rather grimy colored youth, came in now 
and then, and made pretence of punching the 
disconsolate fire in the dejected little stove ; 
but he could get no response to his ejaculatory 
remarks from these morose travellers. They 
paid no more attention to him or his talk than 
they did to the stove and its sputtering bluish 
flames. 

Live-Oak, the station where one must change 
cars to go towards Montgomery, was reached 
far in the night. The foremost passenger got 
up, and silently strode out. The other got up, 
and silently followed him. Vance led, Willard 
came after. Neither dreamed of the other’s 
presence. 

Here was an hour’s delay waiting for the 
other train. Live-Oak is not a pleasant place 
for a night-stop. It has a few thieves, a num- 
ber of bunko men, and some regular cut- 
throats, who are always hanging around the 
little station when the night-trains come in. 
One tall, lank fellow was drunk and dangerous, 


1 84 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


wandering around with a knife in his hand, 
swearing he could carve up any man who did 
not like him. 

“ I kin put holes inter any feller ’at ain’t my 
friend faster’n a shoemaker kin drive pegs into 
’em,” he was saying as Willard passed near 
him; “an’ I kin whoop any thing white er 
black er yaller atween here an* Savannah, an’ 
I kin crawl any feller’s log what disputes it. 
Yappee ! yere I am ! ” 

This fellow was dressed in the fragments of 
a suit of butternut jeans. On his head he 
wore an old white slouch hat, whose brim was 
five inches wide, and whose crown was a sharp 
cone. He was lean to emaciation, stringy, 
angular, thin-bearded, sunken-chested, a regu- 
lar Cracker ruffian of the most despicable and 
dangerous sort. 

“ I ’ud kinder like ter swipe somebody with 
this ’ere cuttin’ utensil o’ mine,” he continued, 
stumbling, and nearly falling against Col. 
Vance. “ I ’ud cut a feller half in two at 
one whack, an’ he’d never want no more mer- 
lasses in these ’ere parts. Whoopee! Yap- 
pee ! yere I am, Betsy ! ” 


THE TWO GLOOMY PASSENGERS. 1 85 

Vance put out his hand, and pushed the man 
away from him in order to prevent his falling 
against him. 

“I’ll jist split ye from yer collar-bone to yer 
instep ! ” screamed the Cracker, flourishing his 
knife, and glaring at Vance. The dim light 
swinging near the station door brought into 
dusky, weird relief the form of the miserable, 
drunken wretch. He was really terrible to see 
as he toppled and swayed, and gesticulated and 
swore. 

Vance hastity turned away from him, and 
would gladly have avoided any further contact 
with him. Such escape was not permissible. 
This free American citizen of the piny woods 
of Florida had been insulted. 

“You sheved me, did ye? I’ll not let no 
dern man shev me! Yer jest es good es 
carved up right now ! ” 

Saying this, the crazed bully lunged at 
Vance with the knife. Willard had approached 
them at this point. He saw the knife whirling 
in the air, and the ruffian rushing upon a gen- 
tleman. This was enough. He leaped for- 
ward, and concentrating all his strength dealt 


1 86 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


a straight, powerful blow with his clinched 
right hand. The would-be murderer tumbled 
into a harmless heap. 

“ I hope he didn’t touch you with the knife ? ” 
Willard said, turning to Vance. 

“ No, sir ; .and whom must I thank for this 

easy deliverance ? ” responded Vance, turning 

♦ 

to his rescuer. 

And now their eyes met in the flickering 
glare of the station light, just as a tardy town 
officer arrested the reviving bully, and led him 
away. They evinced surprise They kept 
silent for a time. The incident had caused a 
little commotion among the human night-birds 
of the vicinity, and five or six of them drew 
up around the two. 

“ He knocked ole Jobly sky slantin’ an’ 
crooked,” remarked one. 

“Yes: he hit like er mule er kickin’,” said 
another. 

“ Does he take sich spells often ? ” put in 
a third. 

“ Didn’t do it er purpose er nothin’,” a fourth 
suggested. 

“Sometimes there’s fust-class fightin’ mate* 


THE TWO GLOOMY PASSENGERS. 1 87 

rial bundled up in a b’iled shirt an’ store 
clothes,” was another remark. 

“ Kinder calculate ’at ole Jobly ’ud sw’ar ter 
that right now,” some one added. 

“Ef they’d give ole Jobly a fair chance I’d 
like ter see any taller-skinned Northern dandy 
as could tech ’im. This ’ere’s a dirty trick, two 
of ’m a-pilin’ onter one ole man.” 

“S’posen we jes’ clean out the party. 
They’re nothin’ but a couple o’ thievin’ Yan- 
kees, nohow.” 

“ ’Twouldn’t be a bad scheme.” 

If the delayed train had ‘not come crashing 
along just then, with all its light and a crowd 
of passengers, the two gentlemen might have 
fared badly. The thieves and roughs slunk 
back into the darkness to watch for less-guarded 
prey. 

Willard and Vance looked steadily at each 
other, surprised, askance, evidently troubled 
about what ought to be said or done. 

“ All aboard ! ” shouted the train-conductor, 
waving his official lantern. 

“ It was very manly of you, sir,” said Vance, 
bowing to Willard. His voice was constrained, 


1 88 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRT.. 


his manner awkward ; and, before Willard could 
reply, he turned, and hurried into the already 
moving train. Willard followed. 

They took berths in a sleeping-car through 
to Montgomery, and saw no more of each 
other on the way. 

Willard did not sleep. It was beginning to 
dawn upon him, that, like every man who gets 
madly in ‘love, he had been acting the part of 
a simpleton. What a weak, silly childish thing 
he had done in thus running away from the 
house of a hospitable friend ! How utterly 
undignified, impolite, vulgar, his course now 
looked ! What a useless exhibition of his 
feelings too ! It almost made him ill to think 
of it. And Lucie ? He tried to recall every 
word she had spoken to him, every look, every 
gesture, every posture. After all, had she 
given him any good reason for believing she 
did not care for him ? She had demanded the 
return of the sketch on Vance’s account ; but — 
he had not thought of this before — it might 
have been to please her father, and to prevent 
open trouble, and not from any lover’s rea- 
sons. Surely she had not repelled his tenderest 


THE TWO GLOOMY PASSENGERS. 1 89 

attentions with more than mere maidenly mod- 
esty, not in anger, not in the spirit of utter 
refusal. Why did he not stay, and, like a 
brave man determined to win a fair girl, put 
his whole strength into the effort to draw her 
to him ? The more he abased himself, the 
brighter, sweeter, more beautiful, more desira- 
ble, she appeared. What a pure, healthy, charm- 
ing girl, in what a little, old, perfumed, isolated 
world ! Had she not been sheltered from the 
contaminations of society, and filled with all 
the charms of blooming girlhood, for him and 
no other? Ah! the fragrance of jasmine, the 
purity of the Cherokee rose, the modesty of 
the violet, all were hers, the gentle, dignified, 
beautiful Tallahassee girl ! Had not some 
divine power drawn him away from the great 
groaning, crashing, rushing outside world, into 
her fairy circle of dusky oaks, fig-trees, flowers, 
perfumes, and mocking-birds, for some infini- 
tely sweet, good purpose? Was it all over? 
Must he give it up thus ? hear her voice no 
more ? look into her eyes no more ? leave her 
to her narrow world, and — Vance? He sat 
up in his bunk, and clinched his hands. 


190 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
in willard’s absence. 

“ T THINK, brother,” said Miss Julie La 
Rue to the judge, “that, of all outra- 
geously indecent things, this run-away of Wil- 
lard’s is the worst. It is absurdly inexcusable.” 

“Can’t see what possessed him,” replied the 
judge, “unless, unless — Julie,” he stammered, 
changing his tone, “ I half . suspect he and 
Lucie quarrelled.” 

“ How could they ? ” 

“ Oh, young folks have such inexplicable 
ways ! Willard is, like his father used to be, 
full of crotchets ; and Lucie is one of your 
self-willed little souls, you know.” 

“You’ve not caught the right view of the 
affair,” said Miss La Rue, with all a woman’s 
love for being indirect. “I think I know all 
about it.” 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 191 

“Well, what is it ? ” 

“ I have been having an interview with Mr. 
Cauthorne, from whom I have drawn some 
news.” 

“Well?” 

“It was not a quarrel between Lucie and 
Willard.” 

“ Oh ! I only suspected that : it was barely 
possible, not probable ! It was a quarrel, how- 
ever, you seem to mean ? ” 

“Not exactly. Willard feared there might 
be one.” 

“ Well, why do you not tell me, and be done 
with it ? The thing hangs on my mind. I 
want to get rid of it.” 

“Well, the upshot of it all is that Willard 
is a coward,” she said very calmly, “and ran 
away for fear of having to meet Col. Vance.” 

“ If Cauthorne said that, he is a ” — 

“ Brother ! I did not say Mr. Cauthorne told 
me that” 

The old judge’s face had grown florid. He 
was vastly irritated. His old friend’s son 
should not be called a coward. He liked Wil 
lard for his own sake, too, as well as for his 
father’s. 


792 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The facts in the case were, that Cauthorne 
had told Miss Julie La Rue just as little as he 
could, while meeting her persevering questions 
with perfect politeness. She had, nevertheless, 
obtained enough to satisfy her mind that Wil- 
lard, with all a Northern man’s dread of a 
personal encounter, had fled in order to escape 
the possibility of having to fight. And with 
what arguments could Lucie or Cauthorne dis- 
pute this theory ? 

Judge La Rue sought a conference with his 
daughter, who, in a few simple phrases, told 
him all she knew, withholding nothing. She 
even minutely stated the trivial circumstances 
touching the sketch and the fan. 

“ Now,” said the judge, in a tone nearly 
severe, “ I wish you would tell me, Lucie, what 
right Col. Vance had to get affronted because 
the boy” (he always said “the boy” in speak- 
ing to Lucie of Willard) “would not hand him 
over the picture. No young man of any spirit 
would be bullied in that way. The boy is a 
perfect gentleman, and had a right to be treated 
as such.” 

“Oh, papa, I’m so sorry if I did wrong!” 
Lucie began. 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 


193 


“No, daughter, no: you did no wrong. You 
had a right to demand the thing. The boy 
had no right to your picture without your con- 
sent ; but don’t you see it was arrogance, it 
was high-handed presumption, in Col. Vance 
to meddle in the affair ? and I’ll tell him so as 
soon as he returns. The boy was my guest, 
under my roof, a part of my household, one of 
my family almost. It was an insult to you 
and to me for Col. Vance to arrogate to him- 
self the regulating of any of the affairs of my 
family or my guest.” The old man had spoken 
slowly, and with great emphasis, like a judge 
giving an important ruling. Lucie remained 
silent, her eyes modestly downcast, and her 
hands toying restlessly with each other. 

“What will my dear old friend think,” he 
continued presently, “ when the boy goes home, 
and reports that he was driven from under my 
roof, and that he had to leave the State of 
Florida for fear of death at the hands of a 
Southern ” — 

' “ O papa ! ” interrupted Lucie, looking up at 

him deprecatingly, “ Mr. Willard would not say 
that.” 


194 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“What else could he say?” demanded Judge 
La Rue. 

Lucie was silent. She knew very well that 
nothing akin to cowardice had actuated Willard 
in going away ; but her knowledge was of too 
subtle and elusive a sort to be explained by 
words. She had seen him standing in the 
rose-mist of his passion, so to speak, the 
beautiful love he bore her beaming from his 
saddened, manly young face. She was too 
natural and sweet a girl not to treasure with 
infinite tenderness those glimpses of a man’s 
heart blown open like a flower for her sake. 
She had missed him greatly. She could not 
realize that he was gone from her forever. She 
hungered for more of those flashes of art-life, 
those carelessly graphic word-pictures of a 
world she had never seen, those fragmentary 
reminiscences of his London and Parisian 
experiences; his adventures as an art-student, 
his dallyings at the great watering-places. She 
stood by one of the windows of his room, and, 
looking away to the blue, undulating line of' 
the horizon, wondered in what thronged city 
he was setting his feet. Had he already for- 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 


195 


gotten Tallahassee, — the little, dull, flower- 
scented, mocking-bird-haunted city, — and the 
poorly-cultured Tallahassee girl, who had so 
greedily caught every crumb of information he 
had flung to her ?, 

Judge La Rue was a man of action. He im- 
mediately wrote the following letter, and sent 
it to Willard’s home address : — 

“My dear Boy, — I have found out the secret of 
your flight from here. You are all wrong: there is no 
danger. I will not let Col. Vance hurt you. Everybody 
here thinks you went away because you were afraid of 
him. I hardly think this is just to you. If I were you I 
would come back at once. Vance is not especially dan- 
gerous. Hoping for your return at once, 

“Very sincerely your friend, 

“La Rue.” 

When the judge had sent a colored boy to 
post this letter, he smiled grimly. He even 
chuckled all to himself. »“If that missive 
doesn’t fetch him back I’m mistaken,” he 
thought, as he lighted his big brown meer- 
schaum pipe, and leaned back in his easy-chair 
for a philosophical smoke. 

Cauthorne came every day. He showed Lu- 


ig6 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 

cie the letters he received from Vance, whose 
stay was likely to be protracted, owing to the 
lingering, doubtful condition of his father. He 
knew full well that Willard’s undue sensitive- 
ness, and its consequences, had placed Lucie 
in a position which demanded the most delicate 
action on his part. He set himself to amuse 
her in every way which would not make his 
purpose obvious. He drew upon her sweet 
and lovable character for its best-guarded beau- 
ties, and with patient art set them in his book ; 
but he was aware that the finest essence was 
escaping him. It was for him so hard a task 
to determine the boundary of hereditary, cli- 
matic, and sectional peculiarities, as contradis- 
tinguished from those arising out of the new 
order of social forces. He often asked himself 
the question, What manner of girl would Lucie 
La Rue have been had she been reared under 
the old Southern social regime ? He as often 
could frame no satisfactory answer. 

As the time for his departure drew near, he 
began to grow unwilling to leave Tallahassee. 
He had the excuse that his novel was far from 
finished ; but the directors of the newspaper 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 1 97 


would have a new field mapped out for him, 
and, without doubt, he would have to go. 

The legislature adjourned, its members going 
away to their widely-scattered homes, leaving 
Tallahassee to its old dreamy quietude and 
languor. A warmer swell of weather came in 
from the Gulf. The sky grew bluer. The 
smoke of Wakulla became a more, frequent 
spectre, wavering on the southern horizon. 
The weather-beaten and crumbling warehouses, 
once the receptacles of many thousand cotton- 
bales, took on a more ragged appearance, as 
he trees overshadowing them grew grayer and 
jskier in the heat. The grand old homes up 
in the higher parts of the city seemed to with- 
draw themselves deeper into their groves and 
embowering vines. 

Cauthorne began to drive with Lucie every 
afternoon, when the sun was low and the 
breeze was fine. They went out along the 
western road to the old Murat homestead. It 
is a small frame-house, but a story and a half 
high, with heavy brick chimneys at the ends, 
and a low veranda across the front. It stands 
some distance back from the road, with two 


198 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


stately oaks near its western end, and crowns 
a high hill overlooking the distant city and 
several small lakes, while to the north, west, 
and south, vast fertile plantations of red roll- 
ing land sweep away to the horizon. 

There was no one living in the place. It 
was silent, dingy, out of repair. The fences 
were ragged, the ornamental shrubbery needed 
pruning. A rude trellis, overgrown with scup- 
pernong vines, stood a little westward from the 
house. 

Cauthorne and Lucie, leaving the driver to 
hold the horses by the roadside, got out of the 
carriage, and went up and sat on a bench under 
one of the oaks. 

“ If you will suffer it, I will smoke,” said he, 
taking out a curious cigar-case of very fine 
workmanship. 

“ It does not even amount to a kindness if I 
consent,” she replied ; “for I enjoy the fra- 
grant smell of a good cigar out of doors.” 

“Thank you. I never can fully appreciate 
an open-air chat without the company of this 
Indian luxury. But really, I’m no great smok- 
er. Two or three a day are all I take.” 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 


I99 


“You must be an exception. Papa smokes 
twenty pipes a day ; and — and most gentlemen 
who smoke are always indulging.” 

“Yes: they lose sight of the exquisite part 
of the thing, which is a subtle pleasure coming 
only to those who use tobacco of the finest 
quality, and sparingly. Sometimes I abstain 
for several days in order to get the full benefit 
of a slow-burning Havana.” 

He lighted a dark cigar, and began that leis- 
urely puffing so in accord with a warm after- 
noon in the dreamy South. 

“ Don’t you miss Willard ? ” he presently 
went on to say. “You and he used to ride and 
drive together so much.” 

“ I do miss him,” she said, elevating her face 
to gaze at the blue, cloudless arch of the sky. 
“ He was so full of interesting things, — so 
different from ” — 

“ From me or Vance, for instance,” said 
Cauthorne, interrupting her. 

She smiled, and nodded her head. 

“You are kind to relieve me of a difficult 
task. I hated to say that,” she said. 

He looked quizzically at her, and exclaimed 
with a short laugh, — 


200 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


" That is well-turned. You have been learn- 
ing ^of him. Beware, or you will lose the fra- 
grance your isolation has given you.” 

“ If the crudeness and wildness could be lost 
with it, one could bear it. Besides, Mr. Wil- 
lard’s teachings are all safe, don’t you think ?” 

“ I am not sure ; I don’t know. At least he 
would not wilfully give you wrong views of 
life. I do not accept his art-notions. He is 
too much of an impressionist.” 

“ An impressionist ? ” she very innocently 
inquired. 

“ Oh ! that means one who cares nothing 
about elaborateness and precision in express- 
ing an idea, so that the idea really be ex- 
pressed. For instance, he would make a sym- 
^cny out of ” — 

4 That will do,” exclaimed Lucie, laughing a 
little: “I know what his symphonies are.” 

“Yes, you know and you don’t know,” said 
Cauthorne. “ His combinations are many and 
difficult, and they are all fascinating. You 
found him getting a great hold oii you, did you 
not ? ” 

“ I liked him,” she curtly and naively replied. 


IN WILLARD'S A BSD NCR. 


201 


“ Of course. They all do. He gains smiles 
and favors from them wherever he goes. He 
makes no effort to win : they smile to know 
they lose.” 

“He is a lost subject,” said Lucie: “sup- 
pose we turn away from him. He always told 
about what he had seen and done. Why don’t 
you talk about your past ? it is interesting, 
from what Mr. Willard hinted.” 

“When I was a boy I ploughed on a stony 
hillside in Vermont,” he said. “I remember 
the horse was blind of an eye, and the plough 
had one handle bound on with a leather strap. 
Sometimes when the point hit a stone, that 
handle would punch me in the side, and make 
Ey ribs ache for the rest of the day.” 

“ But when you were a man ? ” suggested 
Lucie. 

“I came to fight the South, and got into 
Andersonville prison-pen. I died there every 
hour for months and months.” 

“ Well, and after that ? ” 

“ Oh, after that I went to Iceland, and wrote 
letters for ‘The Herald.’ I froze my skin all 
over me, and it has never been quite the same 
since.” 


202 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ And then ? ” 

“ Then I went to France, to report the dying 
struggle of Napoleon with Prussia. I got a 
three-cornered piece of shell through my thigh 
at Sedan. I saw the Red Republican doings in 
Paris. A woman shot me in the shoulder, 
thinking I was a Prussian.” 

“ Well, go on, please : what next ? ” 

“I have just fairly come out of service in the 
Russo-Turkish struggle. That was the rough- 
est of all my experiences, excepting Anderson- 
ville.” 

“Was Andersonville really so horrible? I 
have heard our soldiers say the Northern pris- 
ons were unbearable.” 

“ I guess that is dangerous ground,” said 
Cauthorne, with a doleful smile. “ Let’s get 
off the subject right at once. Whenever I 
think of the hideous old doctor who pretended 
to wait on me there, I feel like ” — 

“ There, I accept your proposition to change 
the subject,” she exclaimed. “ See how beauti 
ful our little city looks from here.” 

“ It is a happy, dreamy-looking place,” he 
responded ; “ it reminds one of an old-fash- 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 


203 


ioned bee-hive, under an apple-tree, when the 
bees are lying around resting. The bees 
always are resting in Tallahassee, aren’t 
they ? ” 

She looked at him as if slowly turning over 
and examining his phrases, then, — 

“ You mean that we are lazy ? ” she said. 

“ Not in the ordinary sense. I think it is 
the climate. People bask here. They have no 
time to bask in the North.” 

“We are dull and uninteresting to you, be- 
cause we are — are ruined by the war?” she 
rejoined, with just the most distant hint of 
bitterness in her tone. 

“No,” he said, looking down at her with a 
sudden tenderness in his eyes. “You are very 
interesting, and you are not ruined by the war. 
You do not even resemble a ruin.” 

She laughed. 

“ That sounds like Mr. Willard,” she said. 
“You must have a care, or you will be losing 
your — your soldierly brusqueness.” 

“ I am losing it. I am losing a great deal 
else that I can spare. But I am beginning to 
find something to take the space, something so 


204 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


new and sweet and strange. It has stolen into 
me and filled me, like a perfume.” 

Lucie rose, and went to a little unkempt 
shrub, whose scattering flowers gave out uncer- 
tain color. She stood there in silence, with 
her back to Cauthorne. He elevated his voice, 
and continued, “You needn’t run from me: I 
can talk enormously loud. I have a voice 
which can startle Tallahassee out of its sum- 
mer sleep.” 

She did not look around. She put her hands 
and covered her ears, prettily shrugging her 
shoulders. 

Cauthorne got up, and went to her side. He 
had intended to say something suiting his 
mood ; but she turned to him, and pointing 
toward the city with her hand, — 

“ Now, from here, isn’t it a lovely sight ? ” 
she cried, her voice trembling as if with the 
emotion aroused by the beautiful prospect. 

And it was a charming view. A deep valley 
lay below them, beyond which rose a vast 
mound, whereon the houses of Tallahassee 
were sown, gleaming white and gray and brown 
among the waving groves, from top to base. 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 


205 


The old-fashioned Capitol building stood on 
nearly the highest sw'ell. Just below it, on the 
hither side, the old inn, the City Hotel, with 
all its little gabled roof-windows and dilapidated 
verandas, slept among its trees. Farther north- 
ward the low lines of business houses, the for- 
saken cotton yards and warehouses, and then 
the little market-house and sunny square ; still 
beyond, and a little higher, the broad-winged, 
roomy, old residences looking out from among 
the grandest and beautifulest trees in the world. 
They could see the color of the foliage change 
with many a scintillation, as the waves of the 
breeze swept over those undulated groves. 

“ And see ! Look ! 99 she continued. “ Wa- 
kulla is at full blast ! ” 

He followed her hand with his eyes, and saw, 
far in the south-east, a slim, mysterious, dark 
column of smoke spouting straight up to the 
sky. It seemed actually to strike the empy- 
rean, and rebound from its surface in dense 
fleeces and flakes. 

“ It is a great mystery, — that lonely smoke- 
jet in the vast Wakulla swamp,” said Cauthorne 
musingly : “ why doesn’t some one undertake 
to reach it ? ” 


20 6 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


“ I don’t know,” she replied. Then she 
added quickly, “ Oh, Judge White did try it, 
but he failed ! ” 

“ I was talking with Col. Brevard and Mayor 
Lewis about it yesterday,” said Cauthorne ; 
“ and I have written to the proprietors of our 
paper suggesting that they send me to look 
after this inveterate smoker.” 

“ You will find nothing,” she said, with a 
little contempt of the scheme in her voice : 
“ there is nothing to find. Judge White says 
the swamp is absolutely impenetrable. And 
see, while we’ve been talking the smoke has 
vanished ! ” 

Sure enough, it had. Cauthorne turned to 
Lucie with a sort of incredulous cloud on his 
face, and said, — 

“ You will be fading from my sight next, and 
a ghost will come out of the Murat palace 
yonder. By the way, tell me something of 
Murat and his wife, will you ? ” 

“ Oh ! I know absolutely nothing about them. 
They have fallen out of the memory of most 
people here. The war was such a sponge. It 
obliterated every thing.” 


IN WILLARD'S ABSENCE. 


20 7 


“ Is there nothing of them left over ? Were 
their lives a blank here ? ” 

“ There is a curious old chair in the Supreme 
Court room at the Capitol,” she said. “ I have 
wanted it ever since I first saw it. It was the 
Prince Achille Murat’s favorite chair, brought 
by him from France out of a palace of Louis 
XVI. The jlcur-de-lis is carved upon its 
gilded wood-work. It is curiously upholstered 
in green velvet and satin.” 

They drove homeward along the red road, 
down the bold hill, to the flats where the car 
and repair shops of the railway gave forth their 
black coal-smoke and clang of machinery ; 
across an attenuated streamlet, and then up 
the slopes of the city to the level, sandy, shady 
streets. 

They passed by a grand mansion of former 
times, — a great square building, with broad 
verandas and stately chimneys, which seemed 
unoccupied, so bare and staring its windows, 
so unused its doors. 

“ I should like to buy this place,” said Cau- 
thorne, “ and come here to,live. Who is the 
owner ? ” 


20 8 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ It belongs to an order of Catholic sisters,” 
replied Lucie : “ two ladies of the city, chari- 
tably inclined, bought it, and gave it for a 
religious school.” 

“ How silly ! ” he said. “ Such a mansion 
for a schoolhouse ! ” 

“We are too poor,” she replied ruefully: 
“ we cannot keep up such places any more. It 
would cost so much to furnish, so much for 
servants, and I don’t know what all. We are 
too poor.” 

This made him thoughtful for a time ; and 
when he looked up they were at the gate of the 
La Rue premises, and every mocking-bird in 
all that tangled wilderness was an active foun- 
tain of song. 

By the side of the carriage-way, between the 
house and the gate, a negro girl, about fourteen 
years of age, lay asleep, her face in a hot space 
of sunshine, her body and feet in the shade. 
She was as happy as a princess in a palace on 
a bed of down, fanned by perfumed* attendants. 
She grinned lazily, half waking, as they passed. 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD . 209 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 

/^AUTHORNE found Miss Lucie La Rue 
too difficult a subject for his understand- 
ing, trained though it was, to compass. Day by 
day he studied her, with but one thing to en- 
courage him, — his own growing interest. Her 
confidence in him could not be mistaken. She 
felt as safe with him as with a brother, and 
would go with him upon any kind of riding, 
driving, or walking excursion he cared to pro- 
pose. She did not seem to have any concep- 
tion whatever of his danger or of her power ; 
but she well understood her own safety, and, 
wrapped in such knowledge as in a perfect 
mail, she naively and modestly gave herself 
over to pleasing him, and being pleased by him. 
This, indeed, was what he found to be the 
peculiar charm of the Southern girls : so long 


210 


A TALLA HASSEE GIRL. 


as you are not inside the golden circle of their 
friendship, with the password, given you by a 
father or a brother, or other guardian, ready 
upon your lips, you are a million miles, away, 
although near enough to hear their ribbons 
flutter in the breeze ; but, when once you are 
taken into the family enclosure, you become the 
trusted friend of every member, and are hon- 
ored with a confidence so pure and dignified, 
and yet so simple and sweet, that you wonder 
how quickly and easily you become a Southern 
aristocrat. And it would be better for you, 
that, with a millstone about your neck, you 
were let fall into the Gulf Stream, than that 
you should, in the slightest degree, prove false 
to your obligations. The stately father or 
quiet, polite brother would, upon occasion, 
slash you with a bowie-knife, or shoot you with 
a derringer ; and the dark-eyed, delicate, grace- 
ful damsel would not blame him at all, if she 
did not applaud. 

One day a little party, among them Cau- 
thorne and Lucie, went to picnic on the shore 
of Lake Bradford, — a pretty little basin-full 
of water, lying some three or four miles south- 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 


2 1 1 


west from Tallahassee. The journey was per- 
formed on horseback, and it gave Cauthorne an 
excellent opportunity to study the exquisite 
equestrianism displayed by the ladies. One 
girl, a sparkling miss of fifteen, rode with all 
the grace and ease of one trained in the best 
school. In fact, hers had been the best school, 
— that of perfect freedom to ride when she 
pleased, from childhood up. 

The way lay along the road past the Murat 
place ; thence diagonally across the beautiful 
Bloxham plantation, and on through a flat pine- 
woods into a wild swamp ; through a sluggish 
stream, which made the gentlemen draw up 
their feet, and the ladies handle the skirts of 
their flowing habits ; then past a queer log 
cabin, in the door of which an old negress sat 
smoking a pipe; and through a scrubby oak- 
wood, into full view of the little lake shining 
like liquid glass in its green-bordered basin. 
It was a free-and-easy ride, now at a gallop, 
now in a walk, with much talking and some 
laughter ; but it had none of that echoing 
gayety so often an accompaniment to such a 
lark in the North. There was more bowing 


212 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


and hand-waving and other easeful gestures of 
formality all the time visible, and more marks 
of deference to the ladies, more of quiet respect 
shown to the men. 

Miss Julie La Rue, stout and rather aged 
as she was, made herself the leader of this 
cavalcade and picnic, and to her they all were 
indebted for the more substantial part of the 
day’s enjoyments. She had an eye to the pro- 
prieties, and watched her flock with delicate 
care. 

There were som.e skiffs at their service, but 
none of them had sails. Cauthorne took occa- 
sion to display his great power at the oars. 

• He was a man of mighty and trained muscles, 
and his many wounds seemed not to have 
weakened them in the least. He was so will- 
ing and so frank and so strong, that he easily 
became a great favorite with all, and especially 
with the girls. To these, who had all their 
lives been used to men who would never un- 
bend from a certain formal stiffness, he seemed 
a great, big, honest boy, glad to be alive and 
useful, ready to enjoy whatever might turn 
round to him. He had nothing of the air 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 2 1 3 


which would say, “I am of this or that old 
family ; ” he did not suggest a line of ancestors 
by the way he waved his hand or arched his 
brows. But he Was friendly and kindly-voiced, 
and full of expedients for making amusement, 
and quick to see what every trivial exigency 
demanded. None of the other gentlemen of 
the party were near so big-limbed and broad- 
shouldered and tall and large-headed and lib- 
eral-visaged. They were straighter, lither, more 
graceful, quicker-motioned, more like military 
officers or cadets at dress parade. They were 
more inclined to erect attitudes and to standing 
squarely upon both feet at the same time. 

It chanced — and, after all, chance had noth- 
ing to do with it — that late in the afternoon 
Cauthorne took Lucie far out on the lake,, and 
then, throwing down his oars, crossed his hands 
in front of him, and began to talk with her. 
He was not quite satisfied, lately, when not 
talking with her. 

“I have half determined,” he said, smiling 
in what to her seemed his boyish way, “ to stay 
right here with you forever, drifting as the 
swell lists, going as the breeze may draw.” 


214 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“Are all you Northern men full of that sort 
of — of sentiment?” she asked, bending over 
the little gunwale, and idly tipping the water 
with her fan. 

“It is not sentiment,” he replied in a tone 
of gentle resentfulness : “ it is sincere respon- 
siveness to a most charming influence, — this 
climate, the local spirit of things, and all that. 
Why, one dips into an atmosphere of romance 
as soon as he enters the Tallahassee hills. 
You wouldn’t wish one to be unnatural, would 
you ? ” 

“ Oh, certainly ! ” she cried almost gleefully : 
“unnatural people are the most charming in 
the world. They make you forget the immense 
monotony of real life.” 

.He was thoughtful for a minute or more, and 
then he suddenly said, — 

“Miss La Rue, I do not wonder you think 
real life monotonous. You are living in a 
little city which is the type of perfect monotony 
and dulness. You ought to see our Northern 
life. We buzz, whirl, leap joyfully on. Every 
day we are farther along, with limbs trained 
for the race, and eyes alert for every possible 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 2 1 5 

demand of progress. Your people feed upon 
the past : they will not admit that there is any 
future.” 

She looked up at him with the first flash 
of anger he had ever seen on her finely-chiselled 
face. 

“Who robbed us of hope, ambition, our prop- 
erty, our prosperity, our renown, our bravest 
and strongest young lives ? ” she exclaimed, in 
that calm way of hers, with her hands clinched 
on the gunwale. “How can one help feeding 
on the past with four brothers in soldiers’ 
graves, and another worse than dead — all one’s 
property gone, and a black cloud of ignorant 
freedmen camping upon one’s ruined estates ? ” 

“Forgive me,” he cried : “forgive me : I did 
not mean to be understood as you have under- 
stood me. I spoke of your surroundings as 
monotonous and perhaps unwholesome. I did 
not mean to reproach your people for what they 
cannot help. I beg you not to be offended at 
an idle comparison ! ” 

She smiled, a wan, far-away smile, as she 
came slowly back to herself after her burst of 
energetic displeasure. Never before, in all 


21 6 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


her life, had she exhibited such passionate 
resentment She was still trembling from the 
effect of it. She was aware, in a sort of in- 
definite way, that it was because he had said 
what he did, and not because it had been said, 
that she had felt hurt. Somehow she expected 
him to always be soothing in his talk, never 
irritating. Now she had a hard struggle to 
repress her tears. She saw very clearly that 
she had misconstrued him. However, her smile 
re-assured him, and he quickly and lightly 
changed the subject of talk. 

“What is that?” he asked, touching with 
his boot a curious wooden bucket, which lay in 
the bottom of the boat. 

*“ It is a water-telescope, — a sponger’s buck- 
et,” she replied.* 

“ And what is it for ? ” 

“You don’t know? You see it has a glass 
bottom. Put it on the water, and look down 
through it, and you can see to the bottom of 
the lake. The sponge-gatherers on the gulf- 
coast use them. They float on the water all 
day long, gazing through their sponge-buckets, 
with their long-handled sponge-tongs lying in 
their boats beside them.” 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 


217 


He adjusted the rude instrument as she 
directed, and, leaning low over the gunwale 
of the skiff, looked down into the water. The 
effect was so wonderful that he started back. 
It made the water so perfectly transparent that 
he seemed suspended in mid-air. Far down he 
sa,w the sand-grains and pebbles at the bottom, 
seemingly undiminished in apparent size by 
the distances The sensation of flying, as he 
had experienced it in his dreams, came upon 
him with all its strange witchery. For many 
minutes he did not move except with the slight 
rising and dipping of the skiff. Lucie brushed 
a tear from her cheek, and, in her struggle to 
regain her composure, sang a little song in a 
low, bewilderingly sweet voice. 

Why was it that there and then, as he 
seemed, to hang like a bird in the air, and with 
her gentle music filling his ears, his mind went 
back almost a score of years to revel in the 
smoke and blood of battle where the musketry 
was like the roar of a tempest, and the thunder 
of the cannons shook the hills ? Was it the 
voice of his consciousness telling him that 
never in this life could he and Lucie La Rue 


218 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


interpret alike the meaning of that tempest 
and that thunder? Why should he suddenly 
recollect every little detail of his ride across 
the battle front of Chickamauga, as a courier 
from below Gordon’s Mills to the cross-roads 
at the mountain gap ? He could hear the hoof- 
beats of his horse, he could see the spouting 
smoke of the field-guns, and the keen light 
ning of the rifles. He is there, — he is madly 
tearing on, — he rushes into a little thicket, — • 
a rebel soldier rises before him with levelled 
gun, — he jerks his horse aside just as the 
rebel fires, — quick as lightning he levels his 
pistol, and sends a ball crashing through the 
fellow’s hand, and another through his leg, and 
sees him sink down. Every line of that young 
rebel’s handsome face comes out on the field 
of his memory. Why does he start, and sit 
up in the boat, and gaze so hopelessly at 
Lucie ? The face of the mangled rebel boy 
was the very face of Victor La Rue. Why 
does Cauthorne glance over his own stalwart 
form in thinking of poor wrecked Victor? 
Does he think he represents the strong, sym- 
metrical, prosperous North — Victor the shat- 
tered, scarred, dispirited, moody South ? 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 219 


“What was that little thing you sang just 
now ? Go over the first stanza again, please,” 
he said, as Lucie looked up at him. 

“ Take me home to the place where I first saw the light, 
To the sweet, sunny South take me home, 

Where the mocking-bird sang me to rest every night : 
Oh ! why was I tempted to roam ? ” 

sang Lucie, giving the whole wonderful power 
of her voice to the effort ; and she did not 
stop with the stanza, but went on to the end 
of the song. Her friends far away on the lake- 
shore heard every word with perfect distinct- 
ness. 

As she ceased, she lifted her hand, and cried 
out, “ Oh, look, look ! ” 

Cauthorne raised his eyes, and saw a broad 
Japanese sketch against the sky, — a flight of 
herons above the lake from horizon to zenith ; 
long folded necks, slender bills pointing up- 
ward,; shadowy legs stretched far behind ; 
broad, laboring wings. Slowly they passed on 
to the northward, thinking, no doubt, of the 
brooks of Indiana, and the broad marshes of 
the Illinois and the Kankakee. 


220 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ I must soon be following them,” he said, 
“unless our paper concludes to send me to 
reconnoitre the smoke of Wakulla.” 

“You might better go home than to under- 
take that,” she replied ; “ but you must not 
take it that I want you to go.” 

He looked eagerly to read her eyes. 

“ Do you really wish me to stay ? ” he asked, 
knowing that he was treating her unfairly. 

“ Not right here any longer,” she quickly 
and lightly replied. “ I am ever so ready to 
return to our friends yonder. See, they are 
making signals.” 

Cauthorne had noticed a whirl of clouds 
rising in the south-west, and rightly suspected 
there would soon be a little blow without any 
rain. He took up the oars none too quickly, 
for little cat’s-paws and counter-flaws began to 
scamper over the water. Lucie looked alarmed. 

“ I can outgo a cyclone,” he said gayly ; and, 
leaning to, he drove the little skiff along, skim- 
ming the surface like a swallow. 

And Lucie’s face grew sweetly calm. She 
knew she was perfectly safe. 

Cauthorne rode home with Lucie’s aunt, and 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 


221 


found her remarkably well informed touching 
some things of great interest to him, especially 
the past social, commercial, and political his- 
tory of the Tallahassee region. She described 
the town of Newport and the celebrated sul- 
phur-springs near there, as they existed before 
the war. The town once had two thousand in- 
habitants, large hotels, and warehouses. It was 
one of the ports of Tallahassee, being situated 
on the St. Mark’s River, and shipped its fifty 
thousand bales of cotton and its vast cargoes 
of sugar every year. 

“ It is gone now,” she said : “nothing is left 
to tell where it was, save one large, deserted 
hotel, and a few dilapidated houses mostly oc- 
cupied by negroes. And there was Belair, only 
a few miles southward from Tallahassee, — a 
beautiful little town, composed of the summer 
residences of rich planters. It was a centre 
of wit, refinement, wealth, and great luxury. 
Ah, what social gatherings I have attended 
there ! But those stately homes are actually 
rotting down. Only two white families and 
some listless negroes live there now. Down 
near the Gulf was St. Mark’s, on the river 


222 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


below Newport. It was another Tallahassee 
port, and the southern terminus of the St. 
Mark’s and Tallahassee Railroad. It is gone 
too, only a house or two left.” 

She talked freely of the distinguished people 
she had met, — statesmen, poets, artists, foreign 
noblemen, famous women, the stars of the 
stage, and the brilliant lights of Washington, 
Baltimore, and Charleston society. 

“They used to come every winter,” she 
said, — “ gay, brilliant troops of them ; and our 
grand houses were flung open to receive them, 
and we made their stay a continued source of 
delight to themselves and to us.” 

She spoke of remembering, when she was a 
mere child, meeting Harriet Martineau at a 
friend’s plantation house near Montgomery, 
Ala. She said, — 

“I was there, on a visit with my mother, 
when Miss Martineau came. I recollect her as 
a queer, deaf person, much more interested in 
peering into negro cabins, and talking politics 
with the gentlemen, than in seeking the society 
of ladies.” 

She remarked upon the degradation of the 


A PICNIC ON LAKE BRADFORD. 223 

fine old plantations by the system of tillage 
adopted by the freedmen. She called Cau- 
thorne’s attention to the. shallow ploughing 
consequent on the use of little primitive 
ploughs drawn by an ox or a diminutive 
mule. 

“Year by year,” she said, “this manner of 
working is exhausting these once Apparently 
inexhaustible fields, and soon they must become 
worthless.” 

“ And what is to be the end of it all ? ” Cau- 
thorne asked, desiring to hear the final result 
as she would draw it. 

“Abandonment to the negroes and a set of 
whites who are still more abject,” she replied. 

He remembered too well the effect of his 
own sort of argument, on Lucie to care to try 
it with Miss Julie La Rue, so he made no 
direct response. 

When he had parted with the ladies at the 
gate of their homestead, and had returned to 
his room at the hotel, he found a letter awaiting 
him from his employers. 

Its purport may be gathered from the follow- 
ing extract : — 


224 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ If the Wakulla smoke seems to be any thing more 
than mere smoke, take two or three weeks, and look into 
it. You are on the ground, and ought to be able to judge 
fairly of the probabilities of its importance. As for us, 
we do not believe it is worth any trouble or expense. 
But you are to be guided by the facts as they exist.” 

Cauthorne at once determined to make 
further examination of the probabilities before 
entering upon any actual exploration. For the. 
three or four days next following he was busily 
engaged in consultations and interviews with 
such persons as had, or pretended to have, 
knowledge of the location and nature of the 
great swamp out of which the smoke had, for 
fifty years, been seen rising. 

The end of the matter was, he arranged for 


a reconnoissance. 


A HA ID OF BLONDES. 


225 


CHAPTER XIX. 

A RAID OF BLONDES. 

' | "O most Northern persons Jacksonville is 
-*• Florida. All the railroads built into 
Florida go straight to Jacksonville. Even the 
great St. John’s River runs to that happy, for- 
tunate city. All the Florida guide-books have 
large cuts of Jacksonville hotels. All the great 
land speculators and immigration schemers dwell 
in Jacksonville cottages, very new, perky, and 
obviously un-Southern. If you go to Jackson- 
ville, you can with difficulty hear of any other 
place to go to. Jacksonville takes you into its 
inner bosom, and there holds you so long as 
your leisure or your money lasts. You may 
hear vague rumors of an old city named St. 
Augustine, and of a little stream called the 
Ocklawaha, of certain desirable orange-hum- 
mocks away off somewhere, of the Fountain 


226 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


of Youth, and of Okechobee Lake ; but you 
will never even hear of Tallahassee. To the 
citizens of Jacksonville, Tallahassee is an in- 
effable name. They will not allow it to pass 
their lips. The Jacksonville papers say, “the 
State capital,” or “the seat of government:” 
they never print the word “Tallahassee.” That 
extremely popular song, “The Tallahassee 
Girl,” was tabooed and silenced forever in 
Jacksonville the first time a young lady from 
Monticello attempted to sing it in one of the 
hotels. “ My dear young lady,” said the hotel 
proprietor, “ we beg your pardon ; but we are 
advertising in the other direction. We cannot 
break faith with our friends. The song has 
an unfortunate name. We think the State 
capital will be moved when the next legisla- 
ture meets. Dreadful dull old seedy town up 
there : no hotel, — nothing there.” The young 
lady saw at once that the song was not fash- 
ionable. She let it go. 

Occasionally the winter boarders at some 
Jacksonville hotel suddenly catch the excur- 
sion-fever, — a disease little known among 
native Southerners. They wish to go some- 


A RAID OF BLONDES . 


227 


where. Usually this ends in a steamboat -ride 
up the St- John’s to Palatka, or down the St. 
John’s to Fernandina Beach. Such a thing 
as an excursion to Tallahassee had not been 
mentioned at the most fashionable Jacksonville 
hotel for years, when one day in March, during 
the progress of the events of our story, Mr. 
Lucius Hatch boldly sprung the question. 
Before the hotel proprietor was aware of its 
existence, a conspiracy had been completed, 
and about thirty of his liveliest boarders were 
off for a week at the capital. Alarmed and 
chagrined he followed them to the railway- 
station, eloquently expostulating with Hatch 
upon his foolhardy undertaking. 

“ Why, sir, there’s no hotel ; the people are 
all poor and seedy; there’s nothing to eat, 
there’s nothing to see, there’s* nothing to do; 
no water, no boats, no any thing,” he insisted ; 
but Hatch and his followers were enthusiastic. 

“ The green hills of Piedmont-Florida,” they 
cried : “ we are dying to see a hill, if it’s only 
an ant-hill or a mole-hill. We are tired of the 
dull flats about Jacksonville.” 

Their host groaned, and reiterated his ex- 


228 


A TALLAHASSEE C/EL. 


postulations. It availed him nothing. The 
gentlemen said, — 

“ Oh, it’s Hatch’s notion ! ” and the ladies 
cried, “It’s so romantic! We can camp on a 
sheep-farm, or take possession of a deserted 
village.” 

“The fleas, the fleas ! ” muttered the host. 

“ We’ll chance ’em,” said Hatch : “ he can 
well afford to brave all the insects of the 
tropics, who has stemmed the tide of Jackson- 
ville mosquitoes and sand-flies.” 

This was an unkind cut. It weakened the 
adversary’s nerve. The hotel man turned sadly 
away. If you wish to exasperate a Jackson- 
ville person beyond all endurance, suggest to 
him that, of all places in the land of flowers, 
Jacksonville probably has fewest attractions 
and most mosquitoes. If you would like to 
see a poor urchin, mobbed, bribe a boot-black 
to go down a Jacksonville street whistling the 
air of “The Tallahassee Girl.” 

Hatch had chanced to read a communication 
of Cauthorne’s to his paper, relative to the 
physical beauties of the Tallahassee region ; 
and this it was which had caused him to organ- 


A RAID OF BLONDES. 


229 


ize the excursion thither. He knew Cauthorne, 
had met him often at the Union Club, and was 
inclined to believe that whatever he would 
print over his own name would be rather under- 
drawn than overdrawn. 

Hatch was a railroad man of considerable 
note, and could control every facility for mov- 
ing his party. Parlor cars were provided, load- 
ed with ample luncheon-baskets, champagne, 
ice, tea, coffee, colored waiting boys, and every 
thing else, even to cigars, seltzer, and brandy, 
which could conduce to the comfort or conven- 
ience of gentlemen and ladies, or either. 

And so, after a merry ride, they came into 
Tallahassee late in the afternoon. Telegraphic 
despatches had preceded them, asking for means 
of conveyance to the hotel ; and consequently 
a cloud of negroes, with all manner of car- 
riages, stood readyto assault them when they 
arrived. Carriages were there drawn by one 
horse, two horses, and four horses. Negroes 
were there in tatters, and negroes were there 
in natty suits of black cloth. All sorts of 
gesticulation met the eye, all kinds of impor 
tunate vocalization struck the ear. 


230 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


No. i. — “Right dis way, boss, wid de 
ladies. My carridge is de fines’. Take you 
to de hotel in style, boss.” 

No. 2. — “Git outen de way, niggah, let de 
gentlem come ; doan you see he know where 
he gwine to ? Bring on de ladies, boss.” 

No. 3. — “Bet if I h’ist ye one in de year, 
Dave, you’ll not be gittin’ in de way of my 
passengers ag’in. Right straight along to de 
carridge, boss.” 

No. 4. — “How many ladies, boss? Take 
ye up in de four-hoss carryall, fines’ carridge 
in de city. Right yar, boss.” 

No. 5. — “ Hayr’s de ominybus fur de City 
Hotel ! Bes’ ’commodations in de city. Here 
you are, boss, git right in ; any baggage ? ” 

No. 6. — “ Git ’long wid yer one-hoss 
b’rouche ! Hayr’s de quality carridge ; it’s got 
de lates’ style. Doan listen to dem niggahs, 
boss, dey’s got nuffin but a borrei'd wagon : 
dey doan own no carridge.” 

No. 7. — “Dey’s jis’ room fo’ foa’ moa’ in 
dc golden rockaway boun’ fo’ any part ob de 
city. Step in wid de ladies, boss.” 

No. 8. — “ Shet up yo’ trap, Sam, you an’ 


A RAID OF BLONDES. 


231 


John’s done ’bout ’nuff hollerin’ fo’ one day. 
Dese gentlem know whar’ to fine de bes’ ’com- 
modations. Come ’long, boss, I take ye whar’ 
ye wanter go.” 

No. 9. — “ Hayer’s de Tallahassee palace 
coach wid kwishened seats an’ glass winders. 
Carry ye up for a quawtah, boss, come right 
’long.” 

The excursionists, perfectly able to take 
excellent care of themselves, hurried into the 
proffered vehicles, and were drawn up the steep 
red hill to the old hotel. 

Cauthorne, who had not seen any Northern- 
ers for so long a time, felt that these rustling, 
bustling, chattering folk were all in some 
degree his guests. He was immediately intro- 
duced by Hatch to the gentlemen of the party, 
and, later in the evening, to the ladies. 

The moon was near the full ; and it was ar- 
ranged that carriages should be procured, and 
that the city should be done by moonlight. 

A very noticeable thing was the fact that, 
of the eighteen ladies in the party, fifteen 
were decided blondes, the remaining three 
scarcely brunettes ; of the fourteen gentlemen 


232 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

only four were dark-haired. It was Col. Bre* 
yard- who gave them the name of the Blonde 
Raiders. 

To the more staid citizens of quiet, drowsy 
old Tallahassee, the manners of the excursion- 
ists appeared of doubtful propriety. Their 
loud, though well-modulated, voices rang along 
the streets in talk and laughter as they called 
to each other, flinging gay remarks and spark- 
ling replies back and forth from carriage to 
carriage. 

Cauthorne and Hatch, with three ladies, — 
Hatch’s aunt, and two young women by the 
name of Barnes, — occupied an open landau, 
which was driven slowly along all the streets 
of the city, Cauthorne pointing out every thing 
of interest as they passed it. 

Whoever has been in the South has noticed 
with what splendor the full moon shines there ; 
but in the high region of Tallahassee, where 
the night air is free from impurities and mists, 
the effect of its light is glorious, beyond de- 
scription. Every object is so clearly visible 
in it that one fancies that outlines are, in a 
way, accentuated by it. 


A RAID OF BLONDES. 


233 


In this strong, mellow light the excursionists 
saw Tallahassee, and were seen by the Talla- 
hasseeans. The effect was unique in both 
directions. To the Southerners this rippling 
and humming stream of fair . faces, plump 
forms, and blue travelling-dresses; these shin- 
ing heads of yellow hair, braided and frizzed 
and banged ; these clear blue, alert eyes ; these 
loud, merry voices ; this chattering and laugh- 
ter; this appearance of careless ease and 
luxury, — suggested the old golden days when 
splendor and wealth and prodigal hospitality 
brought all these into their homes, and made 
them ring with gayety. To the excursionists 
Tallahassee was, what it is to every one who 
sees it, the very loveliest, drowsiest, dreamiest 
old town they had ever seen. To the most 
careless observer among them, the place 
showed, in ways very difficult to make plain 
with words, its oasis-like isolation, and its tan- 
gled luxuriance of semi-tropical vegetation. 
Along with this it also suggested a social 
isolation of long standing, and a slowly advan- 
cing dissolution of that common bond which 
holds a community together. 


234 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


“Here is the only place that I know of 
where the old South is still dominant/’ said 
Cauthorne, addressing his companions collec- 
tively. “ I find the Tallahassee people a 
delightful study.” 

“The place is a great and very agreeable 
surprise to me,” said Hatch’s aunt. “ I had 
made' up my mind, from what I was told in 
Jacksonville, to see a wretched old village with 
scarcely a pretence of decency in its appear- 
ance.” 

Hatch was delighted, and the young ladies 
declared that Tallahassee w^s perfectly charm- 
ing. 

“ I have been here several months,” said 
Cauthorne, “and I grow more attached to my 
surroundings every day. There is a last-cen- 
tury stateliness and uprightness ; a conserva- 
tism, a scrupulousness, a seclusion, about the 
people, which makes me feel that they are a 
genuine, unadulterated remnant of the ante- 
bellum South.” 

“ How interesting ! ” cried one of the young 
ladies. “ Do the ladies dip snuff, as they do in 
North Carolina ? ” 


A RAID OF BLONDES. 


235 


“ That accomplishment never reached this 
far South,” replied Cauthorne. “ In all serious- 
ness, there is refinement of a unique and most 
superior order here, and especially among the 
ladies.” 

“ Oh, I dare say there is ! ” said the other 
Miss Barnes ; “but what do they manage to do 
with themselves ? No amusements ever reach 
here, I suppose, — no opera, no play, no art- 
exhibition, or any thing.” 

“ Only yesterday,” said Cauthorne, “ I was at 
a picnic, a most enjoyable and original affair, 
on the beach of Lake Bradford near here. We 
rode to the spot on horseback, had boats on the 
lake, and a superb luncheon. Then a few weeks 
ago I attended a splendid party at the mansion 
we are now about to pass : it is Judge La Rue’s 
place. These large grounds were beautifully 
lighted up, and turned into a magnificent sum- 
mer garden, and the old house was lined with 
flowers. There were two hundred guests.” 

As they slowly passed the gate, Cauthorne 
looked up the walk, and saw sitting on a favor- 
ite ’ustic seat Lucie and Willard. He could 
not be mistaken. The truant had returned 


236 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

Judge La Rue, pipe in mouth, sat near them. 
It was, to Cauthorne at least, a very striking 
group. 

'Just at this point the whole party of excur- 
sionists, coming on behind Cauthorne’s and 
Hatch’s carriage, became suddenly quite noisy, 
a contagious mirth breaking out .among them, 
and they made the welkin ring with their 
voices. And yet these were really refined 
persons making all this racket. It was the 
license of American tourists they were indul- 
ging in. An “excursion” without rudeness of 
some harmless sort would be a very novel and 
insipid affair ; but the echoes of their mirthful- 
ness did bound and clatter around in that quiet 
place in a way which Cauthorne tried not to 
realize. He felt guilty of being accessory to 
a great infringement of local custom, and that 
justice required a vicarious suffering on his 
part for the sins of the whole party. It was 
a long, solemn sabbath they were breaking, 
a sabbath which dawned with the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, and which would end — 
when ? 

The excursionists interested Cauthorne no 


A RAID OF BLONDES. 


237 


longer. His mind caught upon Willard and 
Lucie, and there hung. A strange sound was 
in his ears. A sense as of a heavy weight 
upon his bosom oppressed him. He tried to 
shake it off. It would not be moved. The 
lines of the moonlit landscape became hard 
and ugly. The old gray houses, set among the 
orange and fig trees, looked like stiff boxes in 
the midst of ragged thickets. The mocking- 
birds, sleepily singing their night songs in the 
heavy-limbed trees, made no impression upon 
his fancy. He looked at the strong, willowy 
blonde beside him, but he did not see her. In 
her place he contemplated a quiet, dark-faced 
girl, whose wealth of blue-black hair and whose 
soft gray eyes had power to control the very 
pulses of his heart. He was troubled on ac- 
count of Willard’s return. He was aware of 
what it meant, but he could not see how it was 
to end, — Vance, Willard, and himself all drawn 
toward Lucie La Rue, each dreading the others’ 
influence, each feeling that more than life de- 
pended from the issue. 

The carriages rolled on in the shadow-flecked 
streets, and came back at last to the starting* 


238 A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

place. The gay party, like a swarm of bright- 
winged bees, poured into the old hotel, and 
were conducted to their rooms. 

In the apartments of the ladies there was 
much chattering and laughter ; in those of the 
gentlemen, much clinking of glasses, and puff- 
ing of fragrant smoke. 

Cauthorne sat by his window, and allowed 
the cool night-wind to ripple across his trou- 
bled face. These beautiful, careless, unre- 
strained, blonde raiders had served as a 
contrast to heighten the charms of Lucie La 
Rue, just at a time when she seemed about to 
slip away from him. 

He was no visionary. He very sensibly tried 
to reason with himself ; but it was not a case 
for reason. What part of being in love is a 
subject of logical treatment ? He chafed in 
spite of himself. Why did not Willard stay 
away when once he had gone ? What right 
had he to come back, and insist upon having 
his chances over again ? It looked so boyish 
and silly to see a fellow so crazy about a girl ! 
He never would have come back under such 
circumstances, — never in the world ! Such 


A RAID OF BLONDES. 


239 


petulance looks light on paper ; but what man 
is so strong and so , evenly balanced that 
he never has given room for it in his own 
breast ? 

The excursionists remained in Tallahassee 
some days, doing all the places of interest in 
the neighborhood. A young artist among them 
sketched every thing he saw which would admit 
of picturesque treatment, sending great express 
bundles of his work away to “ Harper’s Weekly ” 
and other illustrated journals. A tall blonde 
lady who wore glasses, and who seemed rather 
independent of the rest of the party, called at 
the office of “ The Floridian,” and procured the 
insertion of the following personal : - 

“ Miss Emma L. Dozenbloomer, the charming corre- 
spondent of ‘ The Albany Letterpress,’ and authoress of 
‘Amanda’s Secret,’ is in the city. She is collecting 
material for another book.” 

While she was in the office Capt. Dyke, the 
reserved and polite editor, showed her two 
enormous alligator-teeth brought from Big 
Cypress Swamp. He also gave her the pam- 
phlet of “ The Immigration Bureau,” and a 


240 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


delightfully breezy “ Report of the Agricultural 
Resources of Leon County.” 

The same issue of “The Floridian” con- 
tained the announcement of the death of ex- 
Gov. Vance at Hot Springs, Ark. 


/ 


THOU ART THE MAN. 


241 


CHAPTER XX. 


THOU ART THE MAN. 

DAY or two after the coming of the 



1 1 excursionists, and before their departure, 
Cauthorne went up to La Rue place. Just as 
he passed through the gate he saw Victor La 
Rue sitting on the buttress of roots at the 
foot of an oak. He had his crutch across his 
lap, and was smoking his pipe. 

Cauthorne bowed, and would have passed on 
to the house, but La Rue called to him. 

“ Come and sit with me here,” he said : “ I 
wish to have a little talk with you.” 

A chill crept through Cauthorne’s big frame. 
Lately he had been dreading to meet Victor 
La Rue. The thought had been growing in 
his mind, that here was all that was left of the 
soldier he had shot on the field of Chicka- 
mauga. Deeds of courage, boldness, valor, 


242 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


done in the midst of a battle-cyclone, are well 
enough to remember, and to mention upon 
occasion, so long as there remains a proper 
impersonality about the matter ; but it requires 
a hardened heart to meet without qualms what 
was now cast across Cauthorne’s path. He 
looked into La Rue’s face, and his fear was 
confirmed. He was the very man. There were 
the stubs of the fingers he had shot away, and 
there was the remnant of the leg his ball had 
caused to be amputated. It was with illy con- 
cealed trepidation that Cauthorne turned aside 
and approached La Rue. The crutch had an 
accusing look. 

“ It is cool here,” said the maiihed man, 
making room on the- gnarled roots beside him : 
“ the wind comes under the trees, and makes 
the shade delightful.” 

Cauthorne sat down, and relighted his par- 
tially burned cigar. 

“I have been thinking and thinking, since 
you came to Tallahassee, where I ever saw you 
before,” continued La Rue; “and I believe I 
have recognized you at last, though I may be 
mistaken, sir.” 


THOU ART THE MAN. 


243 


Cauthorne rglled his cigar in his mouth, and 
gazed up into the tree-top, trying to formulate 
a way to avoid details. 

“ Had you ever seen me before I came 
here ? ” he simply asked. 

“I am not sure, sir; but I believe I had. 
Were you in the battle of Chickamauga ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ On the Yankee side ? ” 

“On the Union side, yes.” 

“ Beg pardon, sir : I meant no offence by the 
word * Yankee.’ ” 

“No offence, I assure you,” said Cauthorne 
quickly. 

“You were riding a large black horse,” La 
Rue added. 

“ Yes.” 

“ You galloped through a line of Confederate 
skirmishers in a brushy place not far from Lee 
and Gordon’s Mills?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I thought I had found you out. Don’t you 
recollect me, sir ? ” 

“Yes,” said Cauthorne, rising and standing 
before La Rue, his face growing white. 


244 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The lame soldier grasped his crutch, and 
scrambled to his feet. 

Cauthorne would have given every thing but 
his honor and his life to have been able to 
avoid any further interview. He glanced about 
him as if looking for some way of escape. 
Would this maimed and mangled man force a 
fight upon him ? The thought was horrible. 

“Do you recollect of my jumping out from 
behind a tree, and shooting at you ? ** pursued 
La Rue. 

“Yes.” 

“And I missed you ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“And — and — you — you shot me ! ” 

“ Yes.” 

Cauthorne fixed his eyes steadily on the face 
of La Rue. It was a moment which might 
bring forth a tragedy. The tableau was itself a 
drama. La Rue stood as straight as his condi- 
tion would let him, and returned the look of 
Cauthorne, who towered above him. A great 
silence had fallen in the grove. The two men 
seemed content, for a time, to stand and look at 
each other. Cauthorne’s thoughts .wandered 


THOU ART THE MAN. 


245 


away to Lucie, to his hopes and his fears regard- 
ing her, to the strange barrier this horrible dis- 
covery was raising in his path. How could such 
a thing be surmounted ? His great ability in 
providing expedients at the demand of sudden 
and unlooked-for emergencies, ail ability which 
had made him a prince among war correspond- 
ents, seemed to have deserted him. He stood 
there dazed and bewildered. He could not 
quarrel with a pitiable cripple ; he could not 
quarrel with the man he had maimed and ruined ; 
he could not quarrel with Lucie’s only brother. 
But what could he do? He could see very 
_ clearly why this man should look upon him as 
the cause of his life of misery, and feel like 
focusing years of morbid broodings in one hot 
moment of vengeance. 

But La Rue showed no sign of any violent 
feeling. His look had more of introspection 
and hopeless resignation, than of anger and hate. 

“If I had killed you,” he said, as if half in 
soliloquy, “it might not have changed the result 
as to me. Men were being mangled every min- 
ute. I might have lost an eye or an ear the 
next .volley.” 


246 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“It makes me terribly wretched,” said Cam 
thorne simply : “it is awful.” 

“Oh! don’t speak that way,” answered La 
Rue. “We were mere engines of slaughter 
then. All our better nature was in abeyance. 
We were aq.tii1g under the pressure of a cata- 
clysm. But now we are Christians, and love 
must flow in place of blood.” 

And then Cautliorne recalled, what he had 
known before, that La Rue was a Methodist 
clergyman, a preacher of great eloquence, whose 
whole sad life had emptied itself into the chan- 
nel of revivalism. 

Cauthorne grasped the sound hand of the 
rebel soldier, and looked at him in silence. He 
could command no better mode of expression. 
Tears sprang into his eyes, and his throat 
swelled with emotion.- 

“ I think it would be well, sir, for us to keep 
sacred and secret this knowledge of ours,” said 
La Rue : “ it could do no good to burden others 
with it, and it might give rise to unpleasant 
comment.” 

Cauthorne tightened his grasp on the hand 
he was holding. 


THOU ART THE MAN. 


247 


“You are right,” he articulated with diffi- 
culty : “it ought to die with us.” 

The preacher lifted his eyes toward heaven, 
a sudden transport burning in them. 

“ Lord, forgive us as we forgive our enemies,” 
he murmured. 

There came a breeze leaping through the 
grove, loaded with coolness and fragrance, and 
from the distant fields wandered the plaintive 
songs of the freedmen trudging behind their 
ploughs. The great oaks shook their million 
leaves, and the dusky vines and the dark old 
fig-trees trembled and whispered. Gay-winged 
birds, a flock of paroquets, flew along under the 
lowest boughs. Some distance away Lucie and 
Willard strayed among the cool shadows, their 
lithe young forms outlined against the gray 
front of the old mansion. 

“ We never were enemies,” said Cauthorne, 
his voice recovering all its sincerity and clear- 
ness. “ It was not a personal struggle : it was 
a conflict in which our individualities were 
merged.” 

“Yes, yes,” murmured La Rue. 

If they found a sort of solace in such as* 


248 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


sertion and admission, we ought not to grudge 
it. By some such argument nearly all the 
calamities consequent upon human methods of 
adjusting differences must be softened and 
absorbed. But the clear-cut truth remains, 
that, no matter how different it may be when 
peace has come, in the days of war, hate is the 
prevailing passion, and a burning, unquench- 
able desire to inflict quick and certain death 
flies with every bullet on a battle-field. It is 
well that the flexibility and elasticity of hu- 
man nature is such that the rebound from 
the deadly passion which war engenders causes 
the best soldier to be, when peace blooms 
out of carnage, the first to frame excuses for 
clasping hands with his foe. And it is also 
well that very rarely the maimed wreck from 
the tempest of battle meets and recognizes 
the individual who wrought his irreparable mis- 
fortune. 

Cauthorne and La Rue exchanged very few 
more words. They could find no ground upon 
which to base a conversation. By a tacit rec- 
ognition of the hopelessness of the situation 
they separated, the stalwart Northerner goin£ 


THOU ART THE MAN. 


249 


thoughtfully towards the house, the shattered 
Southerner hobbling deeper into the gloom of 
the grove, — one to chafe and agonize over the 
fatality which had ordered this dark discovery ; 
the other to bend his gloomy eyes upon the life 
in the hereafter, where the crutch and the dis- 
figurements of wounds are unknown, and where 
the darl^ mysteries of our earthly afflictions 
burst into the fragrant blooms of heavenly 
delights. 

As Cauthorne strode on towards where Wil- 
lard and Lucie were dallying under the moss- 
hung trees, his mind admitted a hundre'd 
reasons why he ought ‘to treat as hopeless his 
new-born love for the beautiful Tallahassee girl. 
He could see no reason, in the first place, why 
he should expect her ever to love him ; and 
then this dark fact, which must be held secret, 
and her knowledge that he was engaged in the 
battle where four of her brothers fell, and 
where the fifth and only living one was dis- 
figured, which would be forever coming up, 
seemed to him a barrier which it would be idle 
to attempt to pass. 

He shook hands with Willard, and could not 


250 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


refrain from twitting him about his short stay 
in the North. This was their first meeting 
since the latter’s return. 

“ I tried manfully to stay away a respectable 
length of time,” Willard said; “but I might 
just as well have tried to swim up the rapids 
of Niagara. By the way, what is keeping you ? 
The legislature has adjourned, and ” — - 

“ I shall leave the city to-morrow,” Cauthorne 
interrupted. “ I am going down to reconnoitre 
the smoke of Wakulla.” 

“ I had hoped to see you give up that adven- 
ture,” said Lucie. 

He looked almost eagerly at her. There 
were those sweet gray eyes overshadowed by 
the long lashes, the low, broad forehead, with 
the short locks straying over it, the drooping 
shoulders and full maidenly bust, the heavy 
black braids of hair, tied with scarlet bows, the 
loose, snow-white robe, — the embodiment of 
purity and beauty. His love for her took hold 
of him, and shook him as the reed is shaken by 
the wind. His purpose vanished. The great 
barrier between him and her was swept away 
in an instant. 


THOU ART THE MAN. 


251 


Willard saw the strange, white light in his 
face ; but Lucie was looking another way just 
then, and fanning herself with the wing of a 
snowy heron. 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


2 52 


CHAPTER XXI. 

IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 

HEN Willard came back to the La Rue 



" * place, he walked right in, as if he had 
only been out for a turn in the afternoon air. 
He had come by the hack from Thomasville, 
and with his little brown leather travelling-bag 
in his hand was in the middle of the open hall 
when Lucie met him. He was handsomer 
than ever in his light, close-fitting suit of gray ; 
and he smiled very frankly, and put out his 
hand for a welcome, having in his eyes a manly 
flash of joy. 

“ It’s no use,” he said, “ I can’t stay away. 
Here I am.” 

Lucie was startled by such a sudden and un- 
looked-for apparition. She trembled a little ; 
and her voice was not quite steady as she took 
his hand, and said, — 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 


253 


“I am glad you have Come.” 

“ It is ever so kind of you to say so. It 
relieves me of the terrible embarrassment of 
apology, when apology would be so insuffi- 
cient,” he replied, his eyes gathering the 
merest trace of sadness, and his voice shad- 
ing into regret. “ I have my punishment, I 
assure you.” 

He stood before her so erect, so evidently 
conscious of .his ability to make generous 
amend for his fault, so confident of receiving 
cordial forgiveness, that she felt her embarrass- 
ment rapidly slipping away. 

“ Your room is just as you left it,” she said. 
“ It has been waiting for you.” 

“ I have dreamed of it constantly,” he re- 
'plied with a swift smile. “I could not close 
my eyes without hearing the magnolia-bough 
brushing across the east window, and the mock- 
ing-birds twittering in the grove. But your 
aunt and your father, are they well ? ” 

“ Quite well, sir ; and they will be real glad 
to see you. Papa was so surprised at your 
sudden leaving.” 

She stood holding one of her hands in the 


254 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL 


other, with her head slightly turned to one side, 
and her long black lashes drooping over her 
eyes. Somewhere in her face, — about her 
mouth more than elsewhere, — there appeared 
a trace of sadness, or slight weariness, as if she 
recently had been thinking deeply. 

“ I did an unpardonable thing,” he said, 
lightly shaking himself; “but I have repented, 
and done penance, and you have forgiven me. 
Let the dead past bury its dead. May I go to 
my room ? I am tired and dusty with the all- 
day’s drive.” 

“Yes. Supper will be called in a few min- 
utes ; and,” she smilingly added, “ there are 
strawberries and cream to be served.” 

He bowed, and was turning to go up stairs, 
when she said, — 

“ I heard of your brave and generous act in 
defence of Col. Vance, at Live Oak.” 

“ That was nothing, — who told you ? ” 

“ A little bird,” and they parted. 

Once more in the prim, airy, old room, Willard 
took off his travel-clothes, and, having bathed, 
dressed himself with scrupulous care. This 
done, he clasped his hands behind him, and. 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 


255 


walking to and fro, indulged in a brown study. 
There was the old rustling of stiff magnolia- 
leaves at the window, the same sweet inflowing 
breeze, the mocking-birds everywhere singing, 
the blue sky, and sections of hill-notched hori- 
zon. He felt as though he had been a hundred 
years away, without the slightest change having 
come in his absence. » 

Miss Julie La Rue and the judge met him 
at the supper-table, quite as if he had never 
been away. He had never seen them more 
perfectly at ease or more entertaining. 

Conversation at length turned to Vance’s 
father’s death, just announced by telegraph ; 
and incidentally the successful labors of Cau- 
thorne in behalf of Col. Vance’s political plans 
were spoken of by the judge in terms of warmest 
praise. 

“We have grown to respect Mr. Cauthorne 
very, very highly,” the old man said : “ he is a 
gentleman of most sterling character and abili- 
ties.” 

“ I am glad you are finding him out,” said 
Willard. “ He is slow to get acquainted with ; 
but he is full of all manner of kindness, good- 


25 6 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


ness, strength, and worthiness. There are few 
such men.” 

“ He is so interesting,” added Lucie : “ his life 
has been a string of such wonderful adven- 
tures.” 

“He takes wholesome views of things,” said 
Miss Julie: “there’s nothing light or trivial in 
him. His mind, like his body, is stout and sub- 
stantial.” 

In a word, it was quite manifest to Willard 
that, during his foolish absence, Cauthorne had 
gained a strong lodgement in the regards of the 
La Rue household. It was an enviable achieve- 
ment. Such a household could scarcely be 
found elsewhere. 

Willard could not help noting and dwelling 
upon certain little evidences of a departure 
from the old customs in the arrangement of 
the supper-room. Green wire-screens had been 
hung in the windows and doors. A vase of 
snowy lilies stood in the centre of the old 
mahogany board. A pretty little bouquet lay 
beside each plate. The tea-set was the blue 
china of grandmother-days, and coolly gleamed 
in the place of the heavy %ilver. Lucie had 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 


257 


brought all this down from the dormer-windowed 
attic. The room looked as though a gentle 
breath of the latest art-whim had just blown 
through it. The walls had been papered, — a 
great concession, — and the woodwork had been 
revarnished. The negro girl who hovered about 
the backs of their chairs used her great brush 
of peacock-feathers perfunctorily, and to no 
purpose ; for there was not a fly in the room. 
She added a picturesque Southern feature to the 
little scene, with her straight, lithe, undeveloped 
figure, her coal-black hands and face, her white 
cotton gown, and her round woolly head wrapped 
in a snowy kerchief. 

It was with an intense satisfaction that Wil- 
lard recognized his own fitness as a part of this 
group. He was a foreign element, he admitted, 
but a perfect foil to emphasize the unique beau- 
ties of his surroundings. 

But Lucie, — he could not leave off studying 
her. Once, when the^colored girl stood behind 
her waving the gorgeous feather-brush, he fan- 
cied her an Oriental queen in barbaric state, 
fanned by her favorite slave; but he rejected 
the fantasy almost instantly, seeing the gentle 


258 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Christian face, the gray, innocent eyes, the 
modest corsage, all rebuking his compari- 
son. 

When supper was over, Judge La Rue took 
Willard’s arm, and, requesting Lucie to fetch 
her guitar, took him out to the much-loved 
seats beneath the oaks. 

The moon was well up the eastern sky, pour- 
ing a strong light slantwise across the grove ; 
and, as is nearly always the case at night in 
Tallahassee, a gentle breeze was drawing from 
the north-west. 

Lucie played a fandango, and afterwards sang 
two or three old familiar songs. 

Willard listened to these, and to the garrulity 
of the old man, in a mood which permitted but 
slight appreciation of either. He was turning 
over in his mind the singular features of his 
intercourse with the La Rue household. It 
surprised him to recollect how meagre this 
intercourse had been, and especially strange 
seemed the tenuity of part of it all. 

He could not remember any p^itive act of 
hers, barring the demand for the sketch ; and 
it seemed to him now that his effect upon her 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 


259 


invagination must have been entirely negative 
from the first. 

While they sat there a great clatter of hcofs 
and grinding of wheels interrupted one of 
the songs. Merry voices rose on the moonlit 
air. 

“ Oh, the excursionists ! ” cried Lucie : “they 
are from your city, sir.” 

Willard hated that recurring “sir” falling 
stiffly into the talk of everybody in the South. 

*“ What excursionists ? ” he asked, coming 
away from his abstractions. 

“ It is Lucius Hatch and a party of North- 
erners from Jacksonville. I used to know 
Hatch’s father. When I was in Washington 
in the year” — Judge La Rue went far enough 
to say. 

Willard interrupted him. ' 

“ Lucius Hatch, did you say ? He’s a very 
dear friend of mine, superintendent of the Air 
Line Railway. Is he here ? ” 

“ Yes, sir : ,(jai^ from Jacksonville this 

afternoon w.i.di some ' twenty-five or thirty 
others,” said the judge. 

As the foremost carriage came in sight, the 


26 o 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


moonlight brought its occupants into bold 
relief against the foliage of the dark fig-orchard 
on the other side of the street, and Willard 
exclaimed, — 

'* Why, there’s Hatch now, and Miss Barnes 
and ” — 

“ Mr. Cauthorne is with them,” said Lucie. 

“What a racket they make!” said the 
judge: “they will alarm the city. They must 
be an ill — they must be a jolly set.” 

“So they are, I should judge; but they are 
good people, the very best, or Hatch would not 
be with them,”, said Willard. 

“ Nor Mr. Cauthorne,” said Lucie. 

The long line of open vehicles drew past ; 
and as each one entered the strong moonlight 
in front of the La Rue gateway, the stylish 
dresses and blonde faces of the women and 
girls, and the well-clothed, well-poised forms 
o* the men, were very distinctly shown. 

“They are like a flight of glad birds,” said 
Lucie : “they cannot contain their happiness.” 

“It is the change of climate,” said Willard 
philosophically. “ They have breathed a draught 
trom the Fountain of Youth.” 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 


26l 


“I should like that sort of life,” rejoined 
Lucie. “ It must be delightful to swing back 
and forth with the sun, keeping just on the line 
of springtime all the year.” 

It was lightly said, but the latent pathos of 
the wish coupled itself in Willard’s mind with 
the great changes the war had wrought. 
Twenty years ago one of the La Rues would 
not have wished in vain for means to indulge 
every caprice of the imagination. 

The merry troop went by with mirthful 
noises trailing after. It was like a taunt, as 
the voices struck against the old dull house, 
and rebounded into the moss-hung trees. 
Some negroes — those ubiquitous black famil- 
iars of the Southern night — slipped across 
the lawn to hang upon the fence and vacantly 
stare at the brilliant procession. It would have 
needed something more enlightening than 
moonshine to give them to understand the 
significance of their difference from the re- 
splendent blue-robed blondes as they were 
trundled by. 

But while Lucie was absorbed, quite as much 
as the quondam slaves, in watching the passing 


262 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


party, Willard was wondering if he should ever 
be able to get any nearer to this witching girl. 
What was holding him away? Surely there 
never was a kinder, sweeter, simpler person. 
Why should not he say his say, and urge his 
cause without fear at the first opportunity? 

Judge La Rue at length excused himself, and 
went into the house. The raid of the blondes 
was over. The last carriage had disappeared, 
the echoes of merry voices had entirely died 
away in the distance. 

“ Lucie,” said Willard, standing in front of 
where she sat, “do you know why I came 
back ? ” 

She looked up quickly as he spoke, and be- 
gan to smile. 

“You do not know ; but I’m going to tell you 
now, and I wish you would listen very atten- 
tively,” he went on. 

“Isn’t it late? What time is it?” she re- 
plied. She had a vague presentiment of what 
he was going to say. 

“ It is time for me to speak, and for you to 
hear,” he said gently. “I have travelled a 
thousand miles, night and day, to come back 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN 263 


and tell you that I love you, that I cannot live 
without you, that my life, my love, and all that 
I am or ever can be, are yours forever.” 

She was white and speechless, even her lips 
losing their ruby brightness. She moved as if 
to get up, but he begged her not to go. He 
cast himself upon the seat close beside her, and 
poured a flood of eloquent prayer into her ear. 

“ Say you love me, Lucie, say you will be my 
wife, say I may be happier than man ever has 
been, speak to me — kiss me” — 

She leaped away like a startled fawn. She 
had gone up the steps, and disappeared almost 
in the twinkling of an eye. 

He picked up the guitar, and followed her ; 
but he saw her no more that evening. 

He walked up and down in his room, chafing 
as only a bewildered and baffled lover can. He 
tried to draw some sort of consolation from 
this or that little thing, as he conned over all 
that she had ever said or done in his presence. 
He sat in the window, and looked out upon the 
lovely moon-lit landscape, rimmed with dark* 
blue hills. He stretched forth his arms, and 
murmured the beloved name. He went and 


264 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


kissed the flowers her hands had placed upon 
his table. He could not sleep, when he at last 
lay down. Brush, brush, brush, rustle, rustle, 
rustle, he heard the magnolia-bough blown 
across the many-mullioned window. He won- 
dered if this was to be the end. 

Next morning at breakfast Lucie was quite 
her usual self, showing no sign of remember- 
ing the little scene on the lawn, talking to 
Willard as if she had never heard him rave. 
She was inscrutable. He looked upon her 
with increased respect for her character as a 
well-balanced and perfectly self-poised young 
woman ; and his passion, something discon- 
nected from his judgment, grew apace, feeding 
and thriving upon what was intended to destroy 
it. 

Coolly he bided his time, fully determined to 
never give over until from her own sweet lips 
should fall the decision of his fate in unequivo- 
cal terms. 

But the time did not come. Something was 
always interfering. They sat together in the 
shade, they sang together in the grand parlor, 
they rode and drove together, she always, by 


IN THE OLD ROOM AGAIN. 265 

some pretty turn, avoiding every assault he 
planned, until finally Col. Vance returned, 
bringing the remains of his father, and a 
great public funeral took place, the whole 
population of Tallahassee following their hon- 
ored and famous old fellow-citizen to his last 
resting-place in the shady cemetery on the hill. 


266 


A TA LLA HA SSEE GIRL . 


CHAPTER XXII. 

SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE. 

X-GOV. VANCE had been an invalid, 



J — ' and out of the field of politics, for a num- 
ber of years ; but he had done much for his 
State, and much for the Tallahassee country, 
called Middle Florida. He was loved by the 
people as much for his personal worth as for 
his legal and political ability. Hence it came 
to pass, that when the telegram announcing 
his death was published, a meeting was called 
in Gallie’s Hall to pass resolutions and to utter 
eulogies. Cauthorne went, and listened to the 
eloquent tributes with very strange feelings. 
Among other things, one speaker said, — 

“ But the grandest part of Gov. Vance’s long 
and active life was that embraced in the four 
years of the war. He was the bravest of the 
brave in the fore-front of battle for the Lost 


SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE. 267 

Cause. He was a knight without fear and 
without reproach. I had the honor to be on 
his staff, and can testify that wherever the 
fight was fiercest, wherever the Yankee hordes 
were thickest, there was seen the tall form and 
white hair of our beloved old leader. He was 
a Southern patriot whose whole energies and 
whose every thought went into the struggle for 
our rights. It broke his heart when we were 
overpowered ; but he had the high courage to 
never acknowledge defeat, and I may be par- 
doned for saying here, that, if his health and 
powers of mind could have been preserved for 
us, we would not now be pandering to North- 
ern sentiments, and harboring in our midst the 
emissaries of Yankee political organization.” 

Upon Cauthorne’s ear such sentiments struck 
with the hateful ting of treason. But what 
affected him more was the fact that Judge La 
Rue, sitting as chairman of the meeting, nodded 
approval at the end of every sentence. He 
embraced the first opportunity of going out of 
the hall. It seemed so strange to hear such 
language publicly used, and to see it publicly 
recognized as fitting the occasion. But why 


268 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


should he immediately fall to thinking of Lucie, 
and, in some remote way, connecting her with 
these Lost Cause orations ? 

A few days afterwards he saw a company of 
men, dressed in Confederate uniform, march in 
splendid order to meet the remains of Gov. 
Vance at the railway-station. It was a military 
funeral of the most impressive character, that 
followed" later ; but Cauthorne could not get rid 
of a guilty feeling while attending it. He felt 
in his heart that it would have been better if he 
had not given countenance, even by his reluc- 
tant presence, to a thing which had the appear- 
ance of nurturing the old sentiments of rebellion. 

Hatch, with his party of excursionists, at- 
tended the funeral. The cemetery was a place 
worth seeing, and the solemnities of such a 
burial could not be passed by. All those gay 
dresses, scattered about under the huge live- 
oaks which shade the stuccoed vaults of the 
Tallahassee dead, added a curiously picturesque 
feature to the scene. The fair faces and yellow 
hair of the Northern girls, despite the nature of 
the occasion, attracted much attention from the 
soldierly youths of the military company. The 


SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE . 269 


careless ease and grace of these girls, the fact 
that the question of dress was entirely out of 
tl .eir minds, and moreover the beautiful natural- 
ness with which they connected themselves with 
the solemn affair, were sweetly impressive. 
Cauthorne found Willard disconsolately stray- 
ing among the tombs on the outskirts of the 
crowd. The young man’s face was in strict 
mourning gloominess, and his thoughts were 
evidently very far from pleasant. They nodded 
and passed each other by without a word. 

The day was one of extreme loveliness, such 
as comes so frequently to that high, breeze- 
swept region. A cloudless blue sky, a rich 
sunshine tempered by a swelling wind from the 
Gulf, spicy fragrance, flower-perfumes, the wash- 
ing sound in the leaves, the near horizon-line, 
the island-like look of the landscape, induced a 
sensation of blessed isolation commingled, in 
the minds of Cauthorne and Willard, with the 
sadness of exile. They wandered restlessly 
around wrapped in dreams of the far-off land 
and the elusive bowers of Love. Hatch could 
not account for their dry, irritable manner. He 
could not get them to talk. 


27 o 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


The Tallahassee cemetery resembles Bona- 
venture at Savannah ; but it is smaller, and is 
not so regularly set with trees. Wide-armed 
live-oaks and water-oaks make a pleasant gloom 
in the place. Many heavy-arched brick vaults, 
stuccoed with a grayish cement, are overrun 
with flowering vines ; but there are few of those 
chilling white slabs and cenotaphs which dis- 
figure our graveyards. Here and there a grave 
is surrounded with a thick stuccoed wall in the 
form of a rectangle filled in with blooming 
shrubs ; many are marked with simple head and 
foot stones. Thrushes and mocking-birds sing 
in the grand treetops all day. 

As Cauthorne slowly wandered about, he now 
and then came upon a striking picture. He 
noticed one young Northern girl, fifteen years 
old perhaps, sitting upon a low, flat tombstone, 
her blue dress spread wide, her hands carelessly 
embedded in her lap, her palmetto hat- set far 
back, and her long, fair hair caught into a thick 
brush by a bright blue ribbon. She was a living, 
breathing statue* of innocence. Only a few 
paces farther on, a negro girl of the same age, 
and also dressed in blue, was leaning against 


SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE. 2yi 

the wall of a tomb. Her face was yellowish- 
black, vacant, Horribly ugly. She held a little 
white child by the hand. Her head was bound 
up in a white napkin. The child was sweetly 
dressed, and showed its aristocratic blood in its 
small ears, delicate, high-arched feet, and 
straight, slender nose. There was an old 
Cracker man, queerly clad in seedy jeans, whose 
hat-crown ran up like a sugar-loaf, and whose 
trousers were drawn about his crooked legs 
like a second skin. He was standing with his 
feet far apart, his body bent forward, his chin 
thrust out, and his hands clasped behind him. 
He was chewing an enormous quid of dark 
tobacco. 

A short hymn was sung at the grave by four 
or five good voices, and then some one began a 
prayer. Cauthorne turned, and saw Victor La 
Rue with upraised hands and heavenward-look- 
ing face. Those stubbed fingers thrilled him 
more than the cadenced tenderness of the 
prayer. 

Beyond the preacher Lucie stood leaning on 
her father’s arm. Willard had come up behind 
her, and stopped with his head uncovered and 


272 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


his eyes downcast. A little to one side, and 
nearer the grave, Col. Vance stood very erect 
with folded arms. 

When the ceremony was over, Willard joined 
Cauthorne, and went with him to the hotel. 
On their way they passed the hot, sandy mar- 
ket-square, with its two or three trees and its 
little trellised market-house. Some carts, whose 
oxen stood between the heavy shafts chewing 
their cud, while the negro owners lay sleeping 
in the sun, were grouped in one spot ; in an- 
other, a pile of vegetables was wilting on a 
rude table. An enormously fat black woman 
sat in a door of the market-house smoking a 
pipe. The low-roofed lines of business build- 
ings, which had been closed in token of respect 
for the dead statesman, were now being opened, 
and a few forlorn-looking Cracker women were 
waiting to get in to barter eggs for groceries 
or calico. 

Knots of freedmen had gathered here and 
there at the street-corners ; and Cauthorne, 
who had watched political matters closely, 
understood this to mean a meeting in the in- 
terest of the carpet-bagger. Later in the after 


SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE. 

noon the negroes poured into Tallahassee by 
every road, from far and near, walking, riding 
on mules, driving in those primitive ox-carts, 
coming any way, so as to get to the “ rally,” as 
they termed it. 

At night the carpet-bagger, a corpulent 
middle-aged man, addressed the motley crowd 
in the street in front of the Capitol. His 
harangue was a tirade against the leading 
white politicians of the State, in which he 
shrewdly argued that unless the negroes rose 
in their might, and asserted their authority to 
rule by reason of their numbers, the yoke of 
slavery would again be fastened on their necks. 
“Think of it!” he cried, “here in Leon 
County you outnumber the whites as four to 
one ! Nearly seventeen thousand of you, and 
only about four thousand of them, and yet 
every official is a white man ! Here in Talla- 
hassee you are two to their one. How does it 
come that the mayor and nearly all the city 
officers are white men? You are to blame. 
You are cowards, and you know you are, or 
you would turn out on election-days, and vote 
them out of office and out of sight. What are 


274 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


you afraid of? You could trample your ene- 
mies under your feet. They wouldn’t dare to 
chirp if you once said, ‘ Here, we are going to 
die fighting, or have our rights. The men of 
the North bled and died for our freedom, and 
we are not going to lose it now. Stand aside, 
for we are coming ! * They’d stand aside, I tell 
you ; and you colored men could reap the re- 
ward of freemen by taking possession of all 
these paying offices. You could get rich, you 
could be gentlemen, you could ride in your 
carriages. What are you going to do ? It’s a 
long time till another election. You’ll have a 
chance to talk and collogue together. Make 
up your minds to be men. Meet these white 
bullies face to face, and, if needs be, pistol to 
pistol, gun to gun, knife to knife, and say to 
them, ‘ Beware ! open the way to that ballot- 
box, or we will open a way through your 
infernal rebel bodies!’” A yell of savage 
approval greeted this part of the address, and 
the mottled throng swayed and jostled and 
gesticulated. But the scene changed very 
quickly. A compact body of armed white men, 
with the steady, regular tramp of well-drilled 


SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE. 

soldiers at a sharp double-quick, swept around 
the outskirts of the dusky assembly. There 
was a loud order. The carpet-bagger got down 
from his improvised rostrum ; the crowd noise- 
lessly and quickly dispersed. The law against 
riotous behavior in the streets had been en- 
forced. The freedom of speech had been cut 
short. The intelligent co-operation of a few 
had been stronger than the ignorant confusion 
of the many. Brain had triumphed, even if it 
had resorted to a show of brute argument. 

Willard had returned to La Rue place, and 
Cauthorne went out upon the now quiet and 
almost deserted streets. As he crossed the 
veranda he met Hatch, who said, with great 
indignation in his voice, — 

“A deuced fine example of republican gov- 
ernment, this ! ” 

Cauthorne did not stop to argue the question. 
Pie flung back his reply as he walked on, — 

“ Oh ! that fool carpet-bagger ought to be 
shot as an insurrectionist and incendiary. He 
is either a lunatic, or a base, unscrupulous fraud 
upon his party.” 

The moon was rismg through a scattered 


276 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


line of fleece clouds which flecked the eastern 
hill-broken horizon, and a strange stillness 
hovered in the air. Some plaintive sounds 
came from afar in several directions, — the 
voices of negroes singing camp-meeting songs, 
as they sought their distant cabin homes after 
their unsuccessful political venture. Once the 
words, — 

“ Praise de Lor’, praise de Lor’, 

He’s de sinner’s frien’, 

Praise de Lor’, praise de Lor’, 

Sinners say amen ! ” 

floating into Cauthorne’s ears, affected him 
powerfully. 

He walked about in the streets, seeing only 
now and then a person. Many of the old busi- 
ness buildings had been turned into drinking 
and gambling dens. These were full of young 
men, most of them of good families. The vice 
of strong drink is greater in the South than all 
other vices taken together. 

When he returned to the hotel, the excursion- 
ists were dancing in the parlor. From a funeral 
to a political row ; from a political row past the 


SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE. 277 


gambling hells to a dance ! Surely here were 
contrasts strong enough for any purpose ! 

But the moon came up over beautiful, drowsy 
old Tallahassee, and flooded the gray roofs and 
dark groves with splendor. Little breezes alter- 
nated with calms ; the mocking-birds stirred in 
their sleep, and dreamily sang in the leafy depths 
of the orchards. “The sweetest city in the 
world, — the home of the loveliest girl that ever 
lived ! ” Cauthorne murmured, and then he went 
to bed and dreamed of Lucie. He had not yet 
found time to digest the conditions being thrust 
upon him. To-morrow maybe, or at least very 
soon, he must take up all the threads of the 
situation, and decide for himself. Now he 
would sleep and dream. 


2 78 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

VACILLATION. 

HEN Hatch and his excursionists had 



* * gone back to Jacksonville to prepare 
for their return to the North, Tallahassee was 
again left to its quietness, its sunshine, its 
shadows, its perfumes, its bird-songs, and its 
social dulness and languor. It was like a calm 
hot day, after a sennight of breezy coolness. 
It was like a picnic-ground after the festivities 
are over and the merry-makers have vanished. 

Cauthorne had completed all the preliminary 
preparations for his recon noissance of the so- 
called volcano ; but he was lingering in :he 
city from day to day, trying to convince him- 
self, by some method of reasoning, that his 
duty was ' not so plain as it seemed. That he 
must give up all thought of Lucie La Rue, 
from a lover’s standpoint, was a conclusion 


VACILLATION. 


2/9 


towards which his judgment had irresistibly 
driven him. It was more terrible than any 
form of death ; but it was also inexorable. 
Love — coming to him so late in life — had 
seized him with such power that its grip was 
felt in every fibre of his nature. His indomit- 
able will, his finely-balanced and powerful judg- 
ment, his keen sense of duty, his high patriotism, 
and his peculiar notions of the perfect harmony 
of sentiment which ought to exist between lover 
and sweetheart, or husband and wife, were 
pitted against this pure and beautiful love for 
the Tallahassee girl ; and all they could do was 
to keep in the strongest light before the lover’s 
eyes the four dead brothers of Lucie on Chicka- 
mauga’s bloody field, the mangled wreck of the 
living one, the sentiments of her people, the 
gray uniforms, the Lost Cause. 

He did not take into consideration the rapid 
change taking place in the South, and the 
probability of the mutation soon beginning, if 
it had not already set in, in Tallahassee. To 
him, for the time, the little conservative city, 
and its surrounding hills and lakes, were the 
whole South ; the stiff, aristocratic, unchanging 


28 o 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Tallahasseeans were the whole Southern people ; 
that Lost-Cause eulogy was the sentiment of 
every one south of Mason and Dixon’s line. 

No doubt his love-trouble tended to exag- 
gerate and accentuate his estimate of ‘.he 
meaning of such speeches as he had heard, 
and to emphasize the enormity of the guilt of 
those who uttered and those who indorsed 
them. The fact that the existence of such 
sentiments stood as a barrier between him 
and Lucie was of itself enough to imbitter 
him against the whole community for so long, 
at least, as his deeper-seated and more distract- 
ing cause of perplexity should exist with its 
present force. 

But how could he abandon his hope of one 
day seeing his way clear to marrying Lucie and 
being inexpressibly happy? One’s judgment 
may dictate, and one’s conscience may thunder, 
and one’s duty may beckon, and despair may be 
written on one’s sky, and yet where there is 
love there will be hope. 

Lucie grew more beautiful to his eyes and 
more dear to his heart every day ; and, strange 
to say, he was every day more and more tempted 


VACILLATION. 


281 


to cast himself at her feet, and acknowledge 
that it was he who had mangled and disfigured 
Victor at Chickamauga, and then to ask her to 
forgive him, as Victor had, and be his wife de- 
spite the complex horrors of the circumstances. 
He sometimes harbored the thought that possi- 
bly Lucie, having been a mere child during the 
war, had not become imbued with such bitter- 
ness towards the North as still rankled in the 
bosoms of older Southerners. But now and 
again he would turn fiercely away from all this 
to stare the naked facts in the face, acknowl- 
edging the utter wretchedness and hopelessness 
of his situation. And so, blown back and forth, 
he was tossed upon the waves of torment. 

As he sat at his table in his room, late one 
evening, trying to fill out the last pages of a 
chapter of his novel, striving to find forgetful- 
ness of his own troubles in picturing those of 
his hero, Col. Vance came in bearing in his 
hand a Savannah paper containing a full report 
of all the eulogies pronounced at the meeting 
in memory of his father. 

“When will this twaddle about the Lost 
Cause cease among sensible men in the South ?” 


282 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


exclaimed the colonel, dropping into a chair. 
“ It pains me beyond expression to see my 
fathers friends perpetrating such mischievous 
platitudes in connection with their memorial 
meeting.” 

“ I am glad to see you indignant,” said Cau- 
thorne ; “ but your indignation has no real value 
while it is only expressed in private. It is high 
time for you and all Southern men who ac- 
knowledge that there was really nothing in the 
Lost Cause but the perpetuity of slavery, to 
come out publicly and denounce every thing 
which tends to keep alive sectional hate.” 

“I know it is,”, replied Vance; “but the 
Northern politicians are forever harping on the 
war from their standpoint, and of course that 
keeps our people in no humor to tolerate an)* 
lessening of the spirit of resistance and retort.’ 

“There is an easily appreciable difference,” 
said Cauthorne, “ between the spirit of a boast- 
ful patriot who has fought for his country and 
the rights of man, and the spirit of the defeated 
rebel who snarls because his slaves are freed, 
and his country is still undivided.” 

“Nowjw/ are bitter,” said Vance, his face 


VACILLATION. 


283 


reddening “You ought to remember that de- 
feat is annoying at best, and that utter abase- 
ment at the feet of an enemy is not American. 
I hold that we of the South have a perfect right 
to honor our dead soldiers as heroes, and to re- 
member our victories as well as our defeats ; but 
I am in favor of educating our people up to that 
patriotic self-sacrifice which can and will make 
them willing to forego mere talk for the sake of 
the whole country, and the future glory of our 
government.” 

“It never can be, so long as slavery is re- 
membered with affection,” rejoined Cauthorne. 

“The secret does not lie there,” said Vance. 
“You of the North forget that a small part 
comparatively of the Confederate soldiery were 
slave-owners. No, sir, the tender place in our 
people’s hearts is where the dead are kept re- 
membered, where our widows and orphans, our 
maimed soldiers ” — 

“ Hold ! ” cried Cauthorne, suddenly inter- 
rupting him. “We are getting on forbidden 
ground. Let’s not go farther. We should 
differ, and not be able to accomplish any good.” 

“So far as remembering slavery with affec- 


284 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


tion is concerned, it is not true of our people,” 
said Vance, giving no notice to Cauthorne’s 
suggestion about dropping the subject. “We 
are glad slavery is ended ; but we do not like 
being taunted as rebels for the rest of our days. 
The thing must end some time, and for one, I 
think there ought to be charity and forbearance 
on both sides ; wherefore I say those speeches I 
have referred to were unwise.” 

“Well, well,” said Cauthorne, “perhaps we 
don’t differ so widely, after all. I confess that 
I am ready to see the ‘ Bloody Shirt ’ go out of 
politics.” As he spoke he poured some wine, 
and pushed a glass to Vance. Then in an 
effort at a lighter manner he said, — 

“In my novel here I am trying to exemplify 
the idea you advanced a while ago.” 

“ What idea ? ” 

“ The idea that so long as the maimed and 
mutilated soldiers of the war live there can 
be no perfect union between the North and the 
South.” 

“You mistook me,” said Vance quickly: “I 
did not intend to convey that impression. 
What I did mean was, that it wounded and 


VACILLATION. 


285 


irritated our people to have Northern politicians 
all the time calling our dear dead ones, and our 
dear maimed and crippled living ones, rebels 
and traitors. We love our dead fathers and 
husbands, and our crippled brothers and sons, 
even if we are ready to repudiate the Lost 
Cause.” 

“Let the idea be mine, then,” said Cau- 
thorne, actually hurrying to present his own 
experience under the cover of his novel. “ The 
incident I attempt to portray in my story is 
the case of a young man from the North who 
falls in love with a Southern girl, and is on the 
point of proposing marriage to her when he 
chances to discover that her brother, who was 
terribly maimed and crippled in the war, is the 
same rebel soldier whom he shot on a certain 
battlefield, and that it was his bullets that had 
wrought the complete physical ruin of his 
sweetheart’s only surviving male relative. I 
am making the case a strong one, for a pur- 
pose. I desire the story to have a mere touch 
of allegory in it. It is to raise the question 
between the North and the South : How are 
we to wed while the hideous reminders of our 


286 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


struggle exist ? I may not be able to draw the 
lines parallel, but you and every one can see 
the question presented in the picture. It is a 
question as hard to settle between the sections 
as between my supposed lovers. It is no more 
political in one instance than in the other. It 
is a grand moral proposition which must be 
considered, and its relations determined.” 

“Your lover,” said Vance, “might easily 
settle the question by an appeal to his sweet- 
heart’s womanhood and human passions ; but 
the sections each have millions of mouths and 
millions of conflicting passions and interests. 
There is no parallel. Your young Northerner 
could go boldly up to the Southern girl, and 
say, ‘I love you. It is true I shot your brother; 
but it was in battle, and without malice. It 
was the misfortune of war. I love you for 
your own self.’ If she loved him she would 
kiss him, and go with him to the world’s end, 
even if he had killed a dozen brothers.” 

Cauthorne rose, and walked back and forth. 
His brain was in a whirl, but he looked calm 
and walked steadily. Vance sat in a thoughtful 
attitude, little dreaming what application his 


VACILLATION. 


287 


companion was making of his last expression. 
He rose presently, and went away in the bit- 
terest mood of a vexed politician. 

Cauthorne continued to walk back and forth 
in his room. Vance’s sentence, “ If she loved 
him she would kiss him, and go with him to 
the world's end, even if he had killed a dozen 
brothers,” kept ringing in his ears. He im- 
agined Lucie putting up her sweet mouth to 
kiss him, and to say, “I will go with you.” 
His passion seemed to scorch and shrivel his 
face. Great wrinkles came in his cheeks and 
forehead. 

“ Heaven ! ” he muttered, “ if it could be ! ” 
And the sound of his own voice startled him, 
it was so husky and broken. 

He went and leaned out of the window, and 
let the coolness of the night fall upon his hot 
head. No thought of sleep came to him. The 
moon climbed over the zenith, and sank 
towards the* west. The night began to wane. 
Gray streaks glimmered on the eastern horizon. 
Far and near the cocks crowed, and presently 
the birds over in the Capitol grounds awoke 
and sang. 


288 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“If she loved him she would kiss him, and 
go with him to the world’s end,” he repeated. 

The first rays of the sun fell through the 
window; and, as if its fire had touched some 
combustible in his heart, his face lit up. “ I 
will go and see her,” he thought, “and she shall 
say whether she loves me. If she loves me 
she will kiss me, and go with me ! ” 

All day he nursed his purpose, and in the 
cool of the afternoon he went to La Rue 
place. But Col. Vance and Lucie were just 
starting out to drive as he reached the gate. 
She looked so contented and happy there by 
the dark Southerner’s side, that it almost mad- 
dened Cauthorne. He turned back, and the 
next morning he left for the swamp of Wa- 
kulla. 


GOOD-BY. 


289 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


GOOD-BY. 



S April approached the Tallahassee coun- 


1 try, and threatened to fetch the full fer- 
vor of a Floridian summer in mid-spring, 
Willard saw that his dallying days were num- 
bered, and that he must go home. He was not 
satisfied with himself. He felt that in some 
way he had lately been falling far short of his 
usual success in every thing. His old self- 
complacency had deserted him, and he found 
himself fretfully grasping after some ill-defined 
and elusive explanation. He worried over im- 
practicable matters. He would have liked to 
rectify Floridian social life. A thousand dull 
and hindering elements he would have elimi- 
nated. He would have made the people more 
communicative, more receptive, more progres- 
sive. There ought to be an art-school in Talla- 


290 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


hassee, a grand hotel, and three or four more 
railways. The people ought to paint their 
houses and fences, and prun6 their shrubbery. 
The young men ought to think less of military 
drill and field-sports, and give their minds 
more to helping their country back to pros- 
perity. When Lucie was out of his sight, he 
even found fault with her. She ought to be 
less enigmatical, and pay less attention to local 
restrictions. She ought to bloom out, and not 
always be a bud, not always be saying “ sir ” to 
a gentleman, not always be running away when 
one wished to say pretty things to her. He 
would have changed his relations with Vance, if 
he could have done so. He was exasperated at 
the Southerner’s cold, high courtesy of manner 
towards him. He would rather be cut, or be a 
friend. In fact, things went all wrong with 
him, and he was all wrong with every thing. 
Of course he preserved to perfection his even- 
ness and ease of deportment, his lightness of 
speech, his alertness, his ready smile, his 
graceful gestures ; but a close observer would 
not have failed to discover a change in him. 

Col. Vance’s visits had increased in fre- 


GOOD-BY. 


29I 


quency, till now they were as regular as the 
coming of the afternoon coolness. This of 
itself was a great strain on Willard’s good 
nature ; but the fact that Lucie seemed to be 
forgetting everybody but Vance tore up the 
fountains of his patience. He saw no remedy 
for this last evil ; and so, with the sensation of 
turning himself adrift to float like a dry cork, 
he determined to go away. 

In the morning he said to Judge La Rue, “I 
shall start North on the evening train. My 
time is up, I must go.” He tried to speak 
lightly, and failed. His words fell heavily and 
almost ill-naturedly from his lips. 

“I had hoped, sir,” said the judge, “that you 
would stay a few days longer. I had a special 
reason for wishing you would.” 

“It is simply out of the question,” replied 
Willard. “ I have used up all the ozone of this 
region. I am needing a change. I am getting 
dyspeptic, or homesick, or something.” 

“You don’t look ill, sir: you are the very 
picture of youthful health and spirits,” said the 
Judge carelessly; then he knocked the ashes 
from his pipe, and, leaning towards the young 


292 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


man, added in a confidential tone, “ We are 
going to have a pleasant affair soon, and you’d 
better stay until it’s over. You know what I 
mean.” 

“No,” said Willard almost gruffly. 

“ Oh ! I supposed you were aware of the 
approach of Lucie’s wedding-day,” rejoined 
the old man. “ She and the Colonel are to 
be married within a fortnight. You must stay, 
and join in the merry-making. There is to be 
a swarm of guests and a grand time.” 

“ And so it is to end in that way, — a big 
crowd, a little ceremony, a grand time, and 
then all that beauty and sweetness and fresh- 
ness will be snuffed out like a candle ! ” cried 
Willard. 

The old judge looked shrewdly at the young 
man, and said, — 

“It is a most desirable union. It joins two 
of the oldest families of the State. Lucie will 
be the wife of the wealthiest and the most 
prominent young man in Florida.” 

Willard strove hard to repress what was 
rising in him. He tried to say something 
bright and appropriate ; but he could think of 


GOOD-BY. 


293 


none of those clever turns of expression usually 
at his command. He sat there gazing blankly 
at the upper end of the little cane Lucie had 
given him. 

“I am sorry you and Col. Vance don’t get on 
well with each other,” the judge added: “ I had 
hoped your differences were settled, sir.” 

Willard smiled a dry, hard smile. 

“Our chief difference,” he said, “is one you 
do not seem to understand.” 

“ Ah ! I could not fairly understand, I admit ; 
but I disliked asking you to tell me. I hope it 
is not irreparable, sir ? ” 

Willard shook his head and bit his mustache. 
“I see no way to an adjustment,” he said. 
“ But all the burden comes on me. Vance has 
the upper hand.” He was again trying to speak 
lightly. It was a dreary failure, but he went 
on : “I came a little too late to have a fair 
chance with him.” 

“Pardon, I don’t just get your meaning,” said 
the judge ; but the truth was beginning to dawn 
upon his aged mind. “Your manner disturbs 
me, sir: I am wretchedly sorry if there’s any 
thing really serious at the bottom of this ” — 


294 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL. 


“ Did it never happen to enter your thought, 
that I might love Lucie ? ” exclaimed Willard, 
with the bullet-like directness of intense feeling. 
“Do I look like a blind, deaf, passionless, un- 
impressible stick ? Don’t you know that Lucie 
is the sweetest, beautifulest, most lovable girl 
in the whole world ? Don’t you know I have 
loved her from the first ? ” He paused a mo- 
ment, and then changing his tone, added, 
“What did you think brought me back here ? ” 

The old man’s eyes were wide open. A color 
had leaped into his face. This discovery, albeit 
its suddenness was bewildering, opened a vista 
whose perspective was fascinating. As com- 
pared with Herman Willard, Col. Vance was a 
poor man. The dearest dream of Judge La 
Rue’s declining life was to see Lucie restored 
to the wealth which had been her birthright. 
Strange that it had never before entered his 
mind — but it had; his sister had spoken of it 
long ago as something to be guarded against. 

“ I could have lifted her out of this dull life 
into the world of active pleasures, into a cul- 
tured sphere, into her true place, where she 
would have been the queen of all,” Willard con- 


GOOD-E V 


295 


tinued in the extravagance of his regret and 
disappointment. 

“Well, well,” said the judge, “I had not 
thought of such a thing. I am bewildered. I 
don’t know what to say. Of course there’s no 
remedy.” 

They were sitting on the broad veranda at 
the back of the house. They looked away, 
under the spreading boughs of the trees, to the 
wooded hills a mile north. The intervening 
fields shone hot and dry in the sunlight. 

“Remedy, no remedy, of course there’s no 
remedy,” echoed Willard. “ And if there was a 
remedy, who’d think of applying it ? But then 
one feels all broken up with such a blow. I 
wish I’d never seen this little old unfortunate 
and misfortune - breeding city!” He smiled 
upon the judge in a way half petulant, half 
doleful. He got up, and went to the railing of 
the veranda, and leaned against it with one leg 
bent and the other stretched out. He rested 
his chin in the hollow of his hand. He whistled 
in a whisper. Presently he went on, — • 

“ Oh ! I shall be more reconciled when I get a 
long way off, where I can’t see her, and where 


296 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


her voice can't reach me. One will not feel 
this kind of thing always, do you think ? ” 

The judge crossed his legs, tapped his pipe 
against his shoe, looked thoughtful and ex- 
cited. 

“ You'd better not go this evening,” he at 
length said : “ there’s no hurry, sir, is there ? ” 

“Yes, a mighty hurry,” exclaimed the young 
man. “I should go stark mad if I staid another 
day. Can’t you see how I feel ? Don’t you 
understand ? It’s no boyish love I bear your 
daughter: I’m a man full grown, an intense and 
sincere man. I love with all my might ; and it’s 
no use trying, I can’t stay and see her marry 
Vance. I can’t see her marry any one but me. 
I feel that she ought to belong to me, that I 
ought to take her North as my wife and let her 
see what life really is, let her revel in all the 
delights and luxuries that wealth and society 
can give.” He walked briskly back and forth 
with his head high, and his thin nostrils dis- 
tended. “ She’s too sweet, and fresh, and beau- 
tiful to be forever paled in by the Tallahassee 
hills, and allowed to wither in the stagnant air 
of this dull town,” he continued, whisking the 


GOOD-B Y. 


29 7 


little cane, and thrusting out his well-turned 
chin. “ I don’t see how she ever can be happy 
with him and shut out from the world.” 

Judge La Rue sat there flushed and silent, 
his * thoughts whirling through his brain in a 
crush of confliction. Lucie was his idol. 
Willard, without dreaming of such a thing, 
had aroused the old man’s pet ambition in 
thus egotistically parading his ability to better 
that idol’s condition. 

“It is for her to choose,” the judge said at 
last ; “ and a girl rarely looks ahead to calcu- 
late the chances of matrimony. Lucie is hardly 
a woman yet.” 

“ I didn’t want her to calculate the chances, 
it would be horrible,” cried Willard, stopping, 
and actually glaring at Judge La Rue. “When 
a woman in love stops and calculates, she sinks 
to the level of a self-selling auctioneer. She 
seems to say, ‘ Here I am, going, going, going 
at half a million, who will say the million ? ’ 
It’s too beastly mean for any thing ! ” 

“ So it is, so it is ! ” exclaimed the old man, 
as though he found sudden relief in the idea. 
“ A girl must make her own choice. Vance is 


298 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


a fine man, sir, a fine man ; and his is a good 
family.” 

Willard had often heard this phrase, “ a good 
family,” skipping through the talk of such 
Tallahassee people as he had met ; and when- 
ever he had been able to trace it to its final 
meaning it was connected with the idea of 
owning many slaves “ befo’ the wa’,” and of 
possessing broad estates of chocolate-colored 
cotton-land. 

Lucie touched the grand piano in the parlor, 
idly at first, then she played a familiar prelude, 
and presently began singing, in the sweetest 
way imaginable, the ballad beginning, — 

“ Oh ! the Tallahassee girl is a charmer : 

She sings like the mocking-bird in May.” 

She had no thought that Willard or any one 
was listening. Doubtless she was scarcely 
aware what she was singing. It was an un- 
premeditated burst of girlish music, as sincere 
and earnest as it was light and careless. 

The old man and the youth looked at each 
other, and smiled, despite the perplexing nature 
of their interview. 


GOOD-B Y. 


299 


“Yes,” said Willard, — “a charmer and a 
sorceress. She sings like the sirens. There 
is nothing here but the bones of the victims 
she has lured to death. She has scorched the 
fields, and filled the air with deliriums ! ” He 
had at last succeeded in finding his old light 
manner and his old bantering tone of voice. 
He stood in an attitude of attention, his head 
a little to one side, his eyes half closed. 

“One thing is plain,” said the judge, arching 
his eyebrows : “she's in fine spirits, sir.” 

Willard actually laughed outright. 

“ Shall I go and deposit my adieus and con- 
gratulations together?” he asked; and, without 
waiting for a response, he went through the 
hall into the parlor, leaving the old judge to his 
reflections and his tobacco. 

Lucie had finished the song, and had turned 
half about on the piano-stool, with one fore- 
arm resting along the keys, the other slanting 
down across her lap. Her head drooped, and 
there was a pensive smile on her lips. She was 
a picture to distract and bewilder an artist, a 
girl to set a youth wild with love. 

Willard stood still a moment in the door. 


300 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


She looked up, and blushed to see him there, 
as if she were afraid he had heard her thoughts. 
The rosy blood shining through her cheeks 
gave her an extremely girlish, almost childish, 
look, for the few seconds that her face was 
turned towards him. She rose quickly, as if 
to go out of the room. He stepped in front of 
her, and said, in the airiest tones he could 
command, — 

“ Oh ! don’t run : I’m only going to say fare- 
well, and leave you my best wishes for your mar- 
ried life, and all that. I’m not going to — to ” — 

She covered her face with her hands, but 
only for the merest point of time. Then she 
came bravely to him, and, putting one of the 
trembling hands in his, exclaimed, — 

“You are not going to-day ? ” 

“Yes : my time is up.” 

“Can’t you stay and see me — see me go?” 
she faltered, smiling radiantly. “ It would 
please us very much.” 

That us had a sound which grated on every 
molecule in Willard’s body and soul. He let 
go her hand, as if it had given him an unbear- 
able galvanic shock. 


GOOD-BY. 


301 


“ I cannot,” he said : “ I must go at once. 
I am saying good-by. When I see you again 
— but no, I shall not see you again. I shall 
not come South any more.” 

“But I am coming North,” she said quickly. 
“We are to spend July and August on Grand 
Traverse Bay, in Michigan. Do you ever go 
there ? Is it a nice place ? ” 

“ Oh ! a nice enough place ; a cool, breezy, 
lost, lonely region,” he replied. “ In summer 
it is a good deal like what this is in winter. 
Shall you be at Petoskey?” 

“I believe that is the place,” she said. 

“There’s a Methodist camp-meeting there 
every summer, and lots of good fishing,” he 
added. 

“That will be ever so pleasant,” she rejoined. 
“You know we are Methodists, and Col. Vance 
likes angling.” 

Willard looked at her with the feeling of one 
who sees all the value going out of his life. He 
felt every moment a rush of wild prayers strug- 
gling for utterance ; but he talked lightly on, 
smothering his desperate passion. 

When the hour for his departure arrived he 


302 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


went. It was a very commonplace good-by. 
Judge La Rue insisted upon a promise of a 
visit the next winter; but Willard said he 
should go to Europe. 

He shook hands with Lucie, and said, — 
“While you are on Traverse Bay, go over to 
Northport, and stay a while. It will remind you 
of Tallahassee. Not .that it looks like it ; but 
it is so isolated, so sandy, and so — desolate.” 

When he got into the carriage to be driven 
to the railway-station, he turned and took a 
long look at the old house. There was a breeze 
blowing, and he heard, the magnolia-bough brush- 
ing against the window of his room. 


MR. JUMAS'S HOUSE. 


303 


CHAPTER XXV. 

MR. JUMAS’S HOUSE. 

li WHOEVER goes to Tallahassee will hear 
^ * of the mysterious smoke of Wakulla. 
It was first talked of in the early days when 
St. Mark’s was just beginning to be known as a 
landing-place for Gulf-coast vessels. The sailors 
saw it, from far out on the water, a tall, slender 
column, now black like pitch-smoke, now gray 
like the smoke from burning leaves, and anon 
white like steam. Its apparent location is in 
the midst of a swamp, very little above tide- 
water, wherein grow every conceivable aquatic 
weed and grass and bush and tree, — a jungle 
a hundred-fold more difficult to penetrate than 
any in Africa or India. 

Every newspaper attach / who happens to 
get into Middle Florida feels in duty bound 
to “ write up ” this smoky phenomenon, but 


304 


A TALLAHASSEE GLRL . 


always at a distance, and mostly from hearsay 
evidence. He gets upon some high, windy 
hill near Tallahassee, and, looking south-east, 
sees, or, what is quite the same, imagines he 
sees, the lifting jet trembling against the sky, 
and he writes. He goes and sees Judge White, 
and writes more. He sees Col. Brevard, or 
Mayor Lewis, or Capt. Dyke, and adds some 
interesting particulars. He interviews an aged 
darky, who remembers “when de fus’ house 
wus built in Tallahassee,” and prolongs the 
account. For the rest he draws upon his 
ready imagination, or, if his imagination should 
chance to be slow to move, he whets it with a 
bottle of scuppernong. 

The older inhabitants of Tallahassee may, if 
you are an intimate friend, tell you that once 
“ The New York Herald ” sent a man to explore 
the swamp, and explain the smoke of Wakulla. 
You will hear that this man got lost in the 
jungle, and came near dying, and saw wonderful 
things, and went away a wiser and silenter 
correspondent than was ever in that region 
before or since. You may get from Judge 
White — a genial and genuinely interesting 


MR. JUMAS'S HOUSE. 


305 


gentleman — some account of his own effort 
to reach the foot of that tall smoke-column ; 
how he floundered for miles through mud-slush, 
water, saw-grass, swamp-weeds, and bay-thickets, 
millions of mosquitoes, and legions of snakes, 
till, at last, he reached a tall pine on a tus- 
sock ; how he nailed cleats and climbed, and 
nailed cleats and climbed, up this tree, for a 
hundred feet or more, and, with a field-glass, 
looked at the smoke, still six miles distant ; 
and how his assistants all gave up and deserted 
him, and how the wild jungle was utterly im- 
passable any farther, and how he came down 
from his tree, and floundered and splashed and 
swam and dragged and fought his way back to 
terra jirnia, sick, discouraged, but more than 
ever impressed with the strangeness of the 
smoke rising from that awful quagmire. 

And it is no hoax, no illusion, no creation of 
a vivid Southern imagination. The smoke is 
there. It has been noted and commented on 
for nearly fifty years. It has been seen, almost 
constantly, from the north, the east, the south, 
and the west. Its location has been accurately 
determined by intelligent observations. It is a 


306 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


permanent and persistent mystery. It is the 
greatest physical phenomenon in Florida. It 
is a standing temptation to inquisitive and 
adventuresome folk, — a constant taunt and 
banter which Nature flaunts in the faces of 
scientific explorers, and it offers the reward 
of fame for high achievement to whomsoever 
will solve its riddle. 

It was, as has been said, first noticed by sail- 
ors on the Gulf coast, and by sponge-fishers ; 
afterwards it came to be a source of considera 
‘ble speculation by the early inhabitants of Leon 
and Wakulla counties. For a time it - was be- 
lieved that it was a sort of beacon or signal 
made by a band of smugglers or. pirates, who 
had a rendezvous there. Some would explain 
it by supposing that runaway negroes had a 
camp in the swamp. During the war it was 
held to be a colony of deserters from the Con- 
federate army. Since the war it has been 
dubbed a volcano. Such, in short, is the his- 
tory of the Wakulla smoke. 

Cauthorne, with a native colored guide, a 
pack-mule, a canvas boat, and, indeed, an outfit 
exactly suited to his purpose, went forth upon 


MR. JUMAS'S HOUSE. 


30 7 


his preliminary survey. It is not a part of this 
story to follow him step by step on his most 
extraordinary journey, nor could it be done if it 
were desired. He has maintained a reticence 
regarding his adventures, which nothing has 
induced him to cast aside. What is known is 
here given, gained mostly from t*he statements 
drawn from a family of negroes living on a 
tussock deep in the swamp of Wakulla, in whose 
cabin he lay for nine days sick of malarial fever. 
It seems that Cauthorne got lost, and that his 
guide, discovering the fact, stole the mule and 
; deserted, making his .way to Tampa, where he 
sold the animal for thirty-eight dollars, and em- 
barked on a vessel bound for New Orleans. 
Thus abandoned, Cauthorne wandered about 
for days without food, and was at last seized 
with a fever which prostrated him. He was 
found in a state of delirium, by a negro girl 
who was hunting a lost cow. She ran for her 
father ; and together they dragged, carried, and 
rolled Cauthorne to their cabin. He was very 
sick. They applied such simple remedies as 
they possessed, and nursed him with that kind- 
liness and tender care so characteristic of their 


308 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


race. For several days he was unable to an- 
swer their questions, or indeed to speak intel- 
ligibly. He lay in the stupor of delirium, 
muttering disconnectedly and giving no heed 
to any thing they said to him. His bed was a 
heap of dried long-moss, his pillow was a roll of 
the same ; sheet he had not ; his cover was a 
nondescript patchwork of many bright-colored 
rags, very clean and very gay. 

The owner of the cabin was a tall, strong 
man, black as Erebus, with a kindly face, and a 
great heap of grizzled wool on the top of his 
head. His household consisted of himself, his 
wife (very fat), and his daughter, three dogs and 
a mule ; and his house was home, stable, and 
kennel all in one. His wife’s name was Sooky, 
his daughter’s Lucy. So it seemed very strange 
to these simple folks when Cauthorne would 
call out, “ Lucie, Lucie ! ” in the midst of his 
moanings. Lucy would go to his bedside, and 
say,— 

“Here I is, boss. What yo’ want of me, 
boss ? ” 

Then the sick man would thrash about with 
his arms, and mutter and murmur all sorts of 


MR. JUMAS'S HOUSE. 


309 


strange things, using words whose meaning was 
beyond the horizon of the poor colored girl’s 
field of knowledge. Once he said (it was imme- 
diately after he had drank some cold, delicious 
spring water), as he turned his face to the 
wall, — 

“Ah, good, sweet, beautiful Lucie ! ” 

The negro maiden laughed, and showed her 
fine white teeth. 

“ Now jes’ listen at de boss,” she exclaimed. 
“He dunno what he sayin’.” 

She sat by him for hours, and fanned him, 
and bathed his throbbing temples with cool 
water. She fetched gay flowers from the 
swamps, where the vines, the weeds, and the 
curious air-plants were all a-bloom, and fes- 
tooned the little square window above his bed. 
She even put a necklace of these around her 
throat above the low-cut cotton slip which 
served her for a dress. 

When Cauthorne at length came back to con- 
sciousness, he looked askance at every thing 
around him. 

“ Where am I ? ” he exclaimed in a voice 
made feeble by his long suffering. 


3io 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“Here yo’ is, boss, at Mr. Jumas’s house,’ 
said Lucy, using the prefix “Mr.” with true 
African pomposity. 

“Mr. Jumas’s house,” muttered Cauthorne, 
and fell asleep. 

By degrees, as the fever went away, he 
picked up in his waking intervals a knowl- 
edge of his condition and whereabouts. He 
began to eat the corn-cakes and the broiled 
birds prepared for him by Mrs. Sooky Jumas, 
and fed to him by Miss Lucy Jumas. Mr. Jor 
don Jumas sat by, and watched the proceedings. 
The two yellowish brindle dogs lay in a corner, 
and snapped their teeth at the flies. 

The cabin was on a hummock island or tus- 
sock, in the midst of an awful swamp ; but in 
one direction the view was fine. Through a 
slender rift in the wood, caused by a marshy 
swale, the eye caught a widening stretch of 
meadow or grass-swamp, beyond which, some 
five miles away, rolled the greenish-blue waters 
of the Gulf. The wind, sharp and sweet, blew 
in along this natural avenue, and poured 
through the little window upon Cauthorne. It 
acted as a stimulus and tonic. It was better 


MR. JUMAS'S HOUSE. 


311 

than wine or quinine. He convalesced rap* 
idly. 

It was a source of pleasure to him to watch 
the manoeuvres of his black host and the 
women who nursed him. They were a reve- 
lation to him. The girl, especially, was an 
odd genius. All three of them were kind, ex- 
tremely respectful, and very anxious to see him 
get well. Certain points of negro etiquette 
were scrupulously observed by them. One 
was, that their guest must eat first ; another 
was, that they would not take a morsel of food 
in his presence, to avoid doing which they set 
their table out in the open air under a natural 
bower of spreading water-oaks. He often could 
hear them talking about him, and speculating 
as to where he came from, and who he was, and 
where he was going ; but they never asked him 
a question, or appeared curious about him 
when they thought he was aware of their 
doings. 

“He fom de Norf,” said Mr. Jumas, one 
night when he appeared to be asleep. “His 
lang’age don't soun’ like Suddern gentlem’s ; an’ 
den he say Mister yumas to me, an’ you know 


312 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


de white folks down yar don’t nebber say Mis* 
ter to no cullud pusson.” 

“ He’s outdacious pooty,” said Lucy; “an’ his 
han’s is ez little ez mine, do’ he’s a powerful big 
man, too.” 

“ He sho’ly mus’ be powerful rich,” said 
Mrs. Sooky Jumas. “Dat gole watch an’ dem 
fine cigars, dey don’t ’long to no po’ man, I tell 
yo’ now dey don’t.” 

“Well, it’s none o’ our business nothin’ 
about him,” added Mr. Jumas. “Jis’ so we 
kin help ’im git well, an’ sen’ ’im ’long ’bout 
his natural business, same like udder folks, we’s 
done our duty ez Christians. We don’t need 
to know whedder he rich or po’ ; for ’tain’t 
none ob our ’fairs ’bout dat.” 

“He’s berry dark skinned,” said Lucy Ju- 
mas; “but den I s’pose he’s all white, do’ I’s 
seed whiter cullud pussons dan he* is.” 

“ Jes’ lissen at de gal ! ” exclaimed Mr. Jumas. 
“Don’t you see de ha’r? No cullud pusson 
ebber had sich ha’r ez dat.” 

“I seed a cullud young lady oncet,” said 
Miss Lucy, “what could comb her ha’r jes’ 
like a white pusson, an’ it was long an’ pooty 


MR. JUMAS' S HOUSE. 


313 


nigh red too. She lived over at Monticello. 
I seed her last camp-meetin’. She had a high 
red comb an’ a yaller dress an’ long gloves 
what had buttons on ’em, an’ de bigges’ gole 
breas’-pin. She wus quality gal, I tell you.” 

“De mos’ ’spectablest cullud folks is dem 
what hab no white blood in ’em. I nebber see 
no yaller folks what didn’t fink dey’s too smart 
to be hones’,” said Mr. Jumas. “ Da’r was 
Gus’ Bradley, he was pow’ful yaller, an’ he got 
hung fo’ stealin’ an’ sich. If yo’s goin’ to be 
cullud folks, w’y be cullud folks, an’ ef yo’s 
goin’ to be white folks, w’y be white folks, 
dat’s what I say. It alius seemed like a yaller 
nigger had got all de bad ob de white blood an’ 
all de mean ob de nigger blood in ’im, an’ no 
good f’om anywhar : dat’s de way it looks to 
me.” 

Cauthorne was soon well enough to go. Mr. 
Jumas agreed to take him in his mule-cart to 
Oil Station on the Tallahassee and St. Marks 
Rdhvay. Early one morning they set out, 
leaving the little cabin behind them just as 
the gray light of dawn began to flicker through 
the trees. The woman and the girl stood in 


3 X 4 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


the low, wide doorway, and watched them out 
of sight. 

Cauthorne felt a strange regret, or something 
akin to regret, in going away from these poor, 
kindly people. Their humanity and hospitality 
had been of the highest order, and their sense 
of politeness perfect. They had not even 
asked his name or place of residence. 

When they reached the station, Cauthorne 
asked Jumas if there was any thing he needed 
about his little farm. 

“Yah, sah,” said the negro, taking off his 
hat, and rubbing his head : “ef I had a mule 
to match ole Ben dar, and a two-hog's wagon, 
den I could make my plantation jes' roll.” 

“How much would they cost, Mr. Jumas?” 

“ De mule cos’ ninety dollar. De wagon cos’ 
sixty dollar; dat make” — Jumas scratched 
his head again, and struggled with the addi- 
tion ; but it was too much for him. Cauthorne 
took out a blank-book, and wrote, — 

# 

“ B. C. Lewis & Sons, Bankers , Tallahassee. 

“ Pay to Mr. Jordon Jumas or order, the sum of one 
hundred and fifty dollars. 


Lawrence Cauthorne.” 


MR. JUMAS'S HOUSE. 


3 T 5 


‘‘When you go to Tallahassee, give that to 
the gentlemen at Lewis’s Bank, and you’ll get 
the money to buy your mule and wagon,” said 
Cauthorne, handing the check to the astounded 
negro. The poor fellow would hardly take it ; 
but Cauthorne explained and insisted, and 
finally had his way. Then Jumas was over- 
joyed. He did not say much, but his face 
worked, and his eyes shone with excitement. 

This was all that could be found out about 
Cauthorne’s trip to Wakulla. 

The presentation of the check at Lewis’s 
Bank was the cause of the inquiry and the 
explanation. 

The only statements Cauthorne ever made 
were given to a detective whom he sent after 
his guide. 

A long, unauthorized, and wholly fictitious 
account of the exploration was sent by some 
anonymous correspondent to a Western news- 
paper of wide circulation ; but it created no 
sensation, and was never contradicted. 

The smoke of Wakulla still lifts its slender 
column against the sky, and still defies all 
comers. The sailors see it, and say, “The Old 


3i 6 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Man of the Swamp is smoking his pipe to-day.” 
The negroes call it “ De Debil’s tar-kiln.” The 
Crackers, “’low that mebbe hit’s a passel of 
ole light’ud logs afire, or else a patch of this 
’ere swamp mud what gits dry and burns.” 
Its principal use seems to be, that it serves as 
a point towards which all visitors to Tallahassee 
may turn their eyes in wonderment, as towards 
a comet or a meteor, with the assurance that 
they know all that any one else knows about 
the mysterious phenomenon. 


LUCIE. 


31 7 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

LUCIE. 

■jV/TISS LUCIE LA RUE could not be 
justly measured by the common stand- 
ard. The aunt who had taken the place of a 
mother to her, whilst she was a woman of 
excellent qualities of heart and mind, was a 
maiden whose views of matrimonial affairs had 
been unfavorably colored by disappointment, 
and whose social character was monumental. 
Judge La Rue, with the loss of his slaves, and 
the falling to pieces of his great estate, had 
let go much of his desire and also much of 
his ability to maintain his old social leadership, 
even while struggling hard to keep up appear- 
ances for political purposes. Of course, there- 
fore, Lucie’s domestic education had been 
obtained without any of those brightening and 
cheering auxiliary influences caught from con- 


3 IS A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 

tact with progressive, liberal-minded compan 
ions in the home circle. In fact, she had been 
reared, to her present state of development, 
in an atmosphere of social decay, as plainly 
visible as if it had been painted on a canvas 
representing the crumbling homes of her 
native city. She had come up like a flower 
among old mossy stones, finding in some way 
enough soil to furnish the means of growing 
strong and sweet and beautiful, and of gather- 
ing a fragrance entirely unique : but the bloom 
was single ; there was no raceme. It was as 
though she saw a little hand-breadth of blue, 
instead of the sky ; a hilly periphery only four 
or five miles distant, instead of the vast horizon 
of the earth we inhabit. But mere isolation 
was not all, nor was it the strongest factor 
among the forces that had. influenced her life. 
She was of the generation whose memory could 
recall the romantic days of slavery but vaguely, 
and upon whose childhood the war had made 
an effect like that of hearing thunder and the 
roar of a passing cyclone in one’s sleep. 
Naturally she was buoyant, elastic, quick to 
receive impressions, and hungry for knowledge. 


LUCIE. 


3*9 


She had formed certain correct notions of life 
outside the little sphere in which she moved; 
but all the talk and the teachings of those to 
whom she looked for guidance were of a retro- 
spective sort, delivered in the light of what 
had been, and what now existed, but from 
which every gleam of any future of change 
and progress was shut away. She was trained 
to understand that the glory of the South was 
gone forever, that • despots and vandals had 
swept over it with fire and sword, in the ruth- 
lessness of mere desire for plunder and power, 
and left it with nothing but its ashes, its 
broken institutions, its poverty, and its grand 
past. Of course this sitting with the back to 
the future and the face to the past is almost 
the normal state of age and debility. The old 
and debilitated leaders of Southern life were 
all Jeremiahs. They wailed. But the new 
leaders, or would-be leaders, were putting on a 
show of energy and enterprise. They were 
calling to the young men and women to rally 
around the standard of reform and progress. 
Not much success followed this move, how- 
ever. The old lords and ladies of the land 
stood together for utter conservatism. 


320 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


Against the constantly narrowing tyranny of 
customs and manners that had outlived the 
social regime under which they arose, the 
youthful part of the Hite of Tallahassee could, 
of course, muster but a very weak rebellion. 
Grandmothers and mothers clung on to the 
moss-grown and decaying landmarks ; grand- 
fathers and fathers had little means with which 
to institute even the slight reforms their 
changed agricultural, commercial, and profes- 
sional situation demanded. In a climate where 
decay begins at once and goes on rapidly, a 
few years of unavoidable neglect had worked 
a physical change that made the country look 
centuries old ; and the people had unwittingly 
assimilated their bearing to this apparent 
antiquity of their houses, fences, streets, and 
fields. To be sure, with the imitative and 
ambitious impulse of youth, the new generation 
had caught from the great outside world a 
touch of the current fashions in dress and 
deportment; but it was a touch and nothing 
more. The stiff grandeur of a vanished time 
overshadowed them, and its spirit was their 
hereditament : it looked out of their eyes, it 


LUCIE. 


321 


was expressed in their walk ; their high-held 
heads and haughty faces emphasized it. This 
condition of things was prevalent, after the 
close of the war, all over the South, for a time ; 
but it has not even now changed, in the slight- 
est degree, where there has been no considera- 
ble influx of Northern or foreign people. In 
other words, wherever the old generation of 
Southerners rule the South, the old order of 
things, social, domestic, and political, prevails. 
Slavery exists without the slaves ; masters sit 
on decaying verandas with no one to do their 
bidding ; planters lean against rickety fences, 
and look proudly over into overgrown fields 
where the negroes used to work and sing; 
cavaliers, in patched boots armed with big 
brass spurs, and wearing dilapidated sombreros, 
go clattering along on badly groomed steeds. 
The war has changed every thing but the peo- 
ple : they never can be changed until death has 
claimed the old generation, and counter-tides 
of migration and immigration have done their 
perfect work on the new. But there was a 
local and special influence of ultra Southernism 
at Tallahassee which was not touched by the 


322 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


war. The city was a State capital of diminu* 
tive size, and of no importance as a military 
point : hence it stood intact when peace was 
declared. Every physical feature of its ante 
bellum glory was preserved ; and on this account 
the old, haughty, exclusive bearing of its peo- 
ple was easily and naturally retained. It had 
but one railroad coming in from the outside 
world, and this by a route so roundabout that 
the very cars looked stale ; it had a negro post- 
master, a constant source of vexation to the 
leading citizens, and its mails were as uncer- 
tain as its orange-crop. Its newspapers were 
ably and honorably conducted, but they af- 
fected the reader like a dream of last century. 
The billiard-tables in the City Hotel were of 
the kind one wonderingly looked at when 
one was a boy. But all this made Talla- 
hassee charming. One likes old, dreamy, con- 
servative, tree-shaded cities. One goes there 
to rest and doze, and sketch and write. It 
feeds the imagination. But what effect would 
such an environment produce in the case of a 
susceptible, healthy, perfectly balanced woman’s 
nature, developed from childhood to maturity 


LUCIE. 


323 


within its influence ? In a word, how could 
Lucie La Rue, whose life had dawned, ex- 
panded, and reached its present stage of 
womanly dimensions, within this circle of 
isolated conservatism, be measured by the 
same standard as that by which we meas- 
ure those girls who from infancy are kept 
in the full light of the most advanced 
means of culture ? And yet the very narrow- 
ness of her experience seemed to have per- 
fected in her that freshness, that subtile inno- 
cence, that flower-like purity, so rare and so 
captivating to the -best elements of manhood ; 
and the monumental conservatism which sur- 
rounded her, as with a wall, had preserved to 
her the very peach-down of girlish sweetness. 
It had also kept out of her way, until recently 
when Willard and Cauthorne came, all the 
young men who would be likely to woo her, 
save those belonging to the old first families 
of Tallahassee and affected by the same in- 
fluences as herself. No doubt she had had her 
girlish dreams of the grand and beautiful man 
who some day would come into her little world 
from the great universe outside, and claim her 


324 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


as the errant knights and kings claimed their 
brides of old ; but she had allowed Vance to 
approach closer and closer until they were 
engaged. She loved him as a good girl is apt 
to love a worthy man who courts her assidu- 
ously and discreetly on the threshold of her 
womanhood, with a love which often brings 
great married happiness, the unimpassioned 
love which is more like tender reverence and 
unbounded respect and admiration than like 
that hot frenzy of which the poets sing. Yet 
it was love of the purest and sweetest sort, — • 
a love which will last after the sordid dregs of 
a burned-out passion lie like poison in the 
hollow of the heart. 

The coming of Willard and Cauthorne mto 
her sphere had acted as a disturbing force 
whose very dangers, being hidden as such from 
her consciousness, were beautifully fascinating. 
A change came into her life, and her dreams 
took on new colors. Willard, with his stories 
of art-life, and his sketchy way of delineating 
the scenes of grand society, his facile flattery 
and ready flexibility, his sudden bursts of sen- 
timent, and withal his frankness and gentle- 


LUCIE. 


325 


ness of manners, had been to her a messenger 
from a world she had greatly longed to see. 
When he was gone, and she realized that it 
was probably forever, she cried, hardly know- 
ing why. It was as if a dear friend had died 
and gone to that other and far-away world. 
The old house seemed gloomier than ever be- 
fore. She could scarcely quit sending cut 
flowers to his room ; and she never heard the 
magnolia-bough brushing across the window 
without thinking of him, and heaving a little 
quick sigh. It was such a sigh as a mere child 
might give to the memory of a playfellow it 
has left beyond the ocean. She would sing 
the songs he loved, and wonder where he was, 
with a sense of loneliness in her heart which 
she never before had felt. Somehow the little 
dull town looked smaller and duller than ever, 
and the hills dryer and more barren. 

Her rides and drives with Col. Vance were 
delightful in every way, and the evening 
promenades with him up and down the avenue 
of oaks in front of La Rue place were all that 
the ravishing weather and the tender communi- 
cations of her lover could make them : never* 


326 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL . 


theless she contemplated with maidenly shy. 
ness their approaching nuptials, and would 
have been glad to postpone the wedding for 
at least a year ; but she had surrendered to 
the importunities of Col. Vance, and to the 
oft-repeated wishes of her father, and now the 
day was close at hand. 

Victor La Rue, whose love for his sister 
made him quick to notice the slightest change 
in her manner, had lately observed something 
in Lucie’s face which seemed to indicate men- 
tal disquiet. Her cheeks bore each a little 
flush not usually there, and her eyes were 
restless. Her mouth drooped a little, and even 
her frequent smiles could not entirely dispel a 
certain languor which hung about her lips. 

One day, while sitting under his favorite 
tree on the back lawn, Victor called to Lucie 
to come and read to him. The book he handed 
to her was a volume of Paul Hayne’s poems. 
She read aloud, in her musical way, three or 
four of those charmingly sweet and graceful 
lyrics that the Southern poet knows so well 
how to make ; then she put aside the dainty 
volume with a quickly-drawn sigh. 


LUCIE. 


32 ; 


“ It is hard work for me to read : the air is 
not good, is it ? ” she said, leaning back and 
putting her hands behind her head. 

"It is you, sister, and not the air,” said 
Victor in reply : “ you are not happy ; I know 
you are not I’.ve been watching you for two 
or three days, and you don’t act like yourself. 
What is it, Lu ? ” 

He always called her Lu when he felt par- 
ticularly like petting her. 

“ Oh, nothing at all ! ” she exclaimed, taking 
down her hands, and beginning to stroke Vic- 
tor’s hair. “ I’m just a little bit lazy, I 
guess.” 

“ Now you are trying to hide it,” he said 
gravely : “ it isn’t right to do that, Lu, and 
you know it isn’t. You must tell me what is 
troubling you.” 

“But when I don’t know, myself, how can 
I ? ” she replied. “ It’s nothing, in fact.” 

“Sister,” said Victor almost sternly, “you 
have been secretly suffering for several days, 
and I have been indulging many fears for your 
happiness. Will you answer me one easy 
question ? ” 


328 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


She looked at her brother quickly, and with 
out hesitation replied, — 

“Yes, to be sure,” and laughed very lightly 
and naturally. “ I’ve no secrets, Victor.” 

“ If you have no secrets, I don’t care to ask 
any questions,” he rejoined; “but I was going 
to put a very strange one.” 

“Ask it,” she exclaimed, still smiling: “I’ll 
answer it that quick,” snapping her fingers in 
a playful way. 

“You are too anxious,” he responded. “I 
was mistaken, I guess.” 

Two gay-winged birds fell fighting through 
the air to the ground near by, and continued 
their battle there, rolling and pecking and flut- 
tering noisily. 

“ War, war,” exclaimed Victor, gazing at the 
struggling combatants. “Maim each other, if 
you can, poor little wretches ! ” 

Lucie rose and went towards the birds. She 
had nearly reached them when they separated, 
and flew away in opposite directions, leaving 
on the ground a single bright feather. She 
stooped and picked this up. 

“It was a mimic fight,” she exclaimed : “the 


LUCIE. 


329 


blood is only a red breast-feather ! I will wear 
this for the sake of the little knight who 
wrenched it from his antagonist.” She fas- 
tened the scarlet trophy at her throat, where it 
shone like some flower-petal accidentally caught 
there. 

Returning to her place beside her brother, 
she hummed a snatch from an old song, and 
gazed abstractedly up into the tree-tops. 

Victor watched her in silence. Presently she 
said, — 

“It is time for Mr. Cauthorne to return, I 
should think.” 

Victor moved uneasily in his seat at the 
sound of that name. He had been unwell 
lately, and inclined to brood over his misfor- 
tunes. His leg had pained him, and his 
crutches chafed him. His face had grown 
more sallow. 

“Is there any danger down in the Wakulla 
country, Victor ? ” Lucy added after a while. 

“I don’t know,” he answered: “they are 
mostly negroes who live there, harmless I 
should judge. There may be some dangerous 
characters, however, — fellows who would kill 
a man for his watch.” 


330 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“I wish he hadn’t gone. It is a profitless 
undertaking,” she resumed, toying with one of 
Victor’s crutches, and sighing again. 

“Oh ! if he wishes to go wallowing around in 
those malarious swamps until he takes fever, 
and dies, or till he’s killed and robbed by 
negroes, it’s his own fault,” exclairiied Victor 
petulantly : “he wouldn’t hear advice.” 

A sudden pallor went over Lucie’s face. 
She looked into her brother’s eyes, and then 
allowed her glance to wander restlessly from 
object to object. 

Victor saw it all, and there came into his 
mind a half-formed suspicion. He contracted 
his brows, and pondered. 

“ He has been gone more than two weeks,” 
said Lucie after a long silence. “ We ought at 
least to have heard from him : it’s only twenty- 
eight miles away.” 

“ Oh ! he’d likely not think of us any more 
after he was gone. He may be in New York 
by this time. He could take a steamer at St. 
Mark’s, I suppose.” Victor said this very delib- 
erately, meanwhile closely watching his sister’s 
face. 


/ 


LUCIE . 


331 


She looked troubled, and moved restlessly. 
His suspicions took deeper root, and clearer 
outlines. With a sort of hysterical promptness 
he decided upon his course. 

“Lucie,” he said, “are you going to be very 
happy after you’re married ? ” 

She came back from her painful thoughts of 
Cauthorne, with a blush and a smile; but the 
worried look lingered in her eyes. 

“Yes, brother,” she replied: “Arthur and I 
will be the happiest couple on earth ; don’t you 
think we will ? ” 

She turned her eyes away from his intense 
and searching gaze. 

“ Lu,” he said, “ I want you to be happy. I 
pray God you may never see any sorrow. You 
are the only one of us left to be happy. Father 
is getting old, and I am ” — 

“Dear brother,” she exclaimed, putting an 
arm around his neck, and kissing his fore- 
head. 

“I must tell you a strange thing,” he said, 
“ a very strange thing, which it would be a sin 
to keep from you any longer.” He hesitated a 
moment, and then went on, “You know I have 


332 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


always said that if I should ever meet the man 
who shot me at Chickamauga, I could not fail 
to recognize him. Well, I have found him.” 

She started back from him. With her hands 
upon his shoulders she gazed into his face, 
That mysterious power, which belongs exclu- 
sively to woman, was at work. She was read- 
ing the rest of the story in his eyes. 

He waited for her to question him, or signify 
a desire to know more ; but she sat there 
motionless, voiceless, looking into his very 
thoughts, as it seemed. 

“I am sorry I ever found him,” he at last 
added : “ it has made me doubly wretched.” 

“You won’t do any thing bad, Victor?” she 
said in a low, tremulous voice. 

“No,” he replied, “no, there is evil enough 
done already. Can you imagine who he is ? ” 

She did not answer. She took her hands 
from his shoulders, and let them fall upon her 
lap. 

“ Cauthorne,” he said in a husky voice. 

Lucie remained silent. There was such con- 
fusion of thoughts in her mind, that all was 
blurred and indistinct. 


LUCIE. 


333 


A foot* fall sounded near, and looking up they 
saw Col. Vance standing before them. He was 
regarding Lucie with a quiet, happy smile in 
his fine dark eyes. She sprang up to meet him, 
and arm in arm they strolled away among the 
trees. 

The breeze rippled over them, and whispered 
to them, the long moss waved its pale green 
banners, the flowers gleamed at their feet, and 
sent up perfume, the leaves rustled, and the 
birds sang wildly well. The sky was a bless- 
ing, and the earth a comfort. The blue, dreamy 
line of hills that notched the horizon shut out 
from them all the evil of the great outside 
world. Their murmuring voices, so in accord 
with nature’s tones, were blown among the 
leaves and flowers, across the sunshine and the 
shade, till they could not be distinguished from 
the drowsy hum of the insects. 


334 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


THE SILVER BELL. 

HEN Cauthorne, after parting with Mr. 



* * Jumas, got on the railway-train at Oil 
Station, he went into the rear car, and sat down 
by Hollister, the master-mechanic of the road, 
who chanced to be aboard. He had forgotten 
how unkempt he must look, and how haggard 
and wan, after his sickness and his protracted 
absence from tonsorial influences. 

Hollister did not recognize him readily : he 
had to take a second and a third look. 

“ Why, Mr. Cauthorne ! ” he exclaimed at 
last, “ what is the matter with you ? ” 

“ I’ve been hunting big game down in the 
Wakulla swamps,” replied Cauthorne; “have 
had a brush of malarial fever. Nothing serious. 
How is Tallahassee ? ” 

“ Oh, dull ! nothing doing,” said the me- 


THE SILVER BELL. 


335 


chanic, still eying him quizzically. “ You look 
fearful bad, sir, fearful bad. You must ’a’ had 
a considerable tussle. No, there’s nothing do- 
ing in Tallahassee, there’s never any thing doing 
there. Now it’s different in North Carolina 
where I came from. Up at Raleigh there’s 
always something doing. I was master of a 
road up there before I came here about a year 
ago, and I tell you it’s different. The folks up 
there are not above working for a living, and 
the best families don’t avoid being sociable with 
a fellow because he’s poor and didn’t own slaves 
before the war.” 

“ How do you account for the general dilapi- 
dation of Tallahassee and its surrounding coun- 
try, Hollister ? The land is very rich, and 
produce brings large prices.” Cauthorne asked 
this question more from his habit as a corre- 
spondent than from any real desire to get the 
kindly mechanic’s views. His thoughts were 
far away from the proposed subject, in fact, and 
it was as if from a great distance that he heard 
what came by way of response. 

“ Oh ! it’s mighty easy to see what ails Taiia- 
hassee,” said Hollister: “its people can’t realize 


336 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


that there’s been a war, and the niggers are 
freed, and it takes work to make money, and 
land is of no value without intelligent work 
being done on it, and all that sort of thing. 
Why, these old fellows that own all the land 
around Tallahassee actually imagine that they’re 
rich, and highfalutin, and buncomb, like they 
used to be. They don’t admit that a church 
mouse is corpulent by the side of ’em, but it’s a 
Lord’s truth all the same. One thing bothers 
me when I think about ’em : it’s what they’re 
going to do when their carriages and things that 
they had left over after the war all wear out. 
How are they going to top it over honest poor 
folks then? You may just set it down that 
they can’t buy new ones any more. That’s 
played out. I don’t pity ’em much, they’re so 
everlasting high-headed. Now, if they’d just go 
at it, and put intelligence to work on their plan- 
tations, and raise more corn and oats, and less 
cotton, and buy fertilizers, and treat their lands 
decent, they’d get along fine. But they don’t 
think of but two things, — politics, and keeping 
up appearances. A man’ll keep a carriage and 
a white-hatted driver, and take his family to 


THE SILVER BELL. 


33 7 


church in the same old aristocratic way, when 
he’s wearing the same old broadcloth coat he 
had before the war, though it shines like it had 
been pretty near rubbed through at the back 
and elbows. They’ll never make any more 
money till they drop to the racket, and see 
things just as they are. Now, up in North 
Carolina, at Raleigh where I came from, the 
people have got down to fine grinding, so you 
might say, and they’re pulling through all right. 
They’ve got some get-up-and-snap about ’em. 
You ought to go to North Carolina, sir, and see 
how they’re rolling up.” 

“ Hello, Hollister, giving another poor fellow 
a dose of North Carolina, eh?” shouted a big, 
fat man, coming up behind the mechanic, and 
slapping him on the shoulder. “If you* want 
to dry Hollister up, sir,” turning to Cauthorne, 
“just ask him for chaiv of ro sum ;’ you know 
the Tar-heels use pine rosin to chew in place of 
tobacco. He’ll quit talking rather than divide 
‘ rosum ’ with you ! ” 

The fat man went on through to the smoking- 
car. Hollister laughed and said, — 

“That’s Conant : he’s full of jokes. He al- 
ways gets that one off on me.” 


338 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“Are we nearing Tallahassee?” asked Cau- 
thorne, rousing himself as if from a fit of ab 
sent-mindedness. In truth, he hadn’t seen 
Conant, nor had he heard a word of what 
Hollister had been saying. 

“ Yes, sir, we’re nearly there,” was the reply : 
“yonder are the hills.” 

Cauthorne looked from the window across a 
stretch of wet, level sand, and saw with a thrill 
the first green billows of the Tallahassee re- 
gion. It was like the sight of land after a long 
ocean-voyage. Something which since his de 
parture had been in abeyance, now leaped up 
in him, and tugged at his heart and his brain. 
The harsh clacking of the car-wheels was 
turned into music. The breeze rushing in 
through the open window was heavy with per- 
fume. He saw a house on a hill, and a fig- 
orchard clinging along the side of a bluff. The 
engine whistle'd. A colored boy put his head 
in the front doorway of the coach, and shouted 
in a sing-song way, “Tallahassee!” 

If he had been an angel of joy, and had 
announced Eden, it would not have sounded 
half so sweetly in Cauthorne’s 'ears, 


THE SILVER BELL. 


339 


There was a great crowd at the station ; 
soldiers armed to the teeth, — gray-uniformed 
soldiers, grimly determined in face and manner, 
who were thronging On a special train ready 
to start eastward. Cauthorne heard something 
about a murder at Madison, or some other Mid- 
dle-Florida town. A young lawyer and politi- 
cian had been brutally killed by a negro at a 
court-house door, where the investigation-com- 
mittee of alleged election frauds was taking 
evidence. 

“ I’m in favor of killing every nigger in the 
State,” he heard a man say. 

“No, no,” said another. “Let’s abide by 
law. Violence and bloodshed will be common 
enough, do the best we can.” 

“ Law ! ” cried the other contemptuously. 
“ That young man’s death couldn’t be avenged 
by hanging a thousand niggers. I say kill 
every last one of ’em. The sooner they’re 
killed, the sooner we’ll get white immigrants 
in their places. To steal and murder is all 
they’re fit for.” 

Cauthorne thought of Mr. Jumas and his 
family, thus in his own mind refuting the 
man’s sweeping assertion. 


340 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


But the murder was a foul one, and the ex- 
citement was doubled on account of the politi- 
cal origin of the trouble out of which it had 
come. 

At any other time Cauthorne would have lost 
not a moment in collecting all the informa- 
tion possible touching this affair ; but now he 
climbed into John’s carriage, — every one who 
has been to Tallahassee remembers John’s 
carriage, — and asked to be driven to the City 
Hotel. What cared he for murders in neigh- 
boring towns ? What cared he for this one- 
sided struggle between the races ? Let them 
take the negro, and hang him, as he no doubt 
deserved to be hung; but as for himself, he 
had no interest- in* the matter. A sweet voice 
was calling him, little hands were beckoning to 
him ; an old house among the trees, the rustic 
seat, a divinely beautiful form and face, a white 
dress, scarlet ribbons and flowers, — Lucie, 
Lucie, the Tallahassee girl, — these were his 
thought's, these were his whole life. 

He passed through the crowd gathered on 
the veranda of the hotel, and went at once to 
his room. 


THE SILVER BELL. 


341 


Through his windows, while he was prepar. 
ing to go to the barber’s apartments in the 
back of the building, he heard many threats 
from excited lips against the whole negro race. 

“ I wish dey wasn’t no politics,” said the bar- 
ber gloomily. “Us cullud folks what wants to 
do right is gwine ter hab a powerful hard time 
on ’count ob de cullud fools what go in for 
office an’ ’p’intments an’ sich. I wish sich 
niggahs’d all go off Norf.” 

Cauthorne made no reply. It was . none of 
his business. His mind was full of something 
else. The barber continued, — 

“ ’Pears ter me de white folks is got er better 
right ter run de gov’ment dan us darkies has, 
kase dey’s more ’quainted wid de business. 
What ’d I know ’bout makin’ laws ? All I 
keers for is- ’tection an’ a fa’r fiel’ fo’ business 
in my line. De res’ may fight ober de votes 
an’ de counts an’ de offices jes’ as much as dey 
please.” 

Cauthorne went back to his room again. He 
did not care to see any one. There was a pile 
of letters to read. Some of them required an- 
swering. He never before had found labor so 


342 


A TALLAHASSEE G/RL. 


hard, or his thoughts so little at his command, 
01 hia hand so unsteady. 

When the sun was down, and the shadows of 
night began to gather in the streets, he got up 
fiom his writing, and took his hat and cane. 
He stood and hesitated, as of a sudden, for the 
first time since he had recovered consciousness 
from the delirium of fever, it darkly fell upon 
his mind that an impassable gulf lay between 
him and the happiness he sought. Victor La 
Rue, with his stubbed hand and leg, rose before 
him. Col. Vance rose before him. He drew 
his palm across his forehead. He pressed his 
fingers on his eyes. It was but a momentary 
faltering : no power of his could resist the influ- 
ence which was drawing him. He had to go. 

Once out in the street, he walked firmly and 
rapidly toward La Rue place, passing, without 
noting them, the objects grown so familiar to 
his eyes, — the market-house, the little brick 
church, the old place belonging to the Catholic 
sisters, the rows of giant live-oaks, the em- 
bowered mansions. 

There was a new moon, thin and bright, 
hanging in the west, just above the scalloped 


THE SILVER BELL. 


343 


horizon, and the dark blue sky was full of 
stars. 

He tramped along, swinging his cane, his 
eyes downcast. When he reached the La Rue 
gate it was open. A colored boy, standing near, 
took off his hat and bowed, saying, “Walk in, 
sah ; ” but Cauthorne did not notice him. A 
carriage had just passed in, and another was 
close behind him. There was a suppressed 
stir about the place. Servants were silently 
and swiftly flitting about as if some important 
domestic event required all their attention and 
effort. 

Cauthorne passed on to the house ; but as he 
neared the broad steps of the veranda he sud- 
denly became aware that the rooms were filled 
with ladies and gentlemen. Everywhere shone 
brilliant lights, everywhere flowers, everywhere 
the rustle of dresses and the hum of voices. 

He stopped at the flickering edge of the illu- 
minated space around the mansion, and watched 
the forms flit to and fro in the hall and parlors. 

By one of those cerebral tricks, as inexplicable 
as life itself, suddenly a curious old silver bell 
came into his mind. It was a rare, antique 


344 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


piece of workmanship, which had been in the 
La Rue family for many generations. Lucie 
had shown it to him one day. “ It is the family 
marriage-bell,” she had said. “It brings a 
custom with it whose origin is lost as irre- 
coverably as is the bell-maker’s name who 
wrought the curious old thing. Whenever a 
La Rue is married, the bell is hung in the 
wedding-room, in a circle of orange-flowers ; 
and, as soon as the ceremony is' over, it is 
rung. It has a sweet voice.” 

She shook it till its .tender music seemed to 
fill the old house. 

“We are a Huguenot family,” she had con- 
tinued, “and trace ourselves around to the 
south of France. Some time about the middle 
of the sixteenth century there is confusion in the 
line, and we are not certain ; but the bell goes 
back by tradition, and the family marriage- 
custom with it. When I get married it will 
be the first time it has served its tinkling turn 
since papa was the happy man, nearly fifty-five 
years ago.” 

“ I wonder if I couldn’t get it to lift its voice 
at my nuptial feast ? ” Cauthorne had said. 


THE SILVER BELL. 


345 


“ Oh ! it never goes out of the family,” Lucie 
had replied, with a little laugh far sweeter than 
the tones of the bell. 

“ I shouldn’t wish it to,” quickly he had 
rejoined ; and then Lucie had put the bell 
away. 

And now standing there, half in the light, 
half in the shade, Cauthorne recalled every 
minute feature of the little conversation. 

He leaned heavily on his cane, and, pressing 
his hand on his forehead, muttered, — 

“ It is her wedding-night, — it is her wedding- 
night.” 

And the words, spoken scarcely above a 
whisper, seemed to reverberate as far as the 
winds could go. In his heart there - was fire, — 
burning and consuming fire, — in his mouth 
was thirst, in his brain a crush and confusion 
coming on again with redoubled force. 

How helpless a being is man when once Fate 
seizes him! How useless his powerful limbs, 
his cunning, sinewy hands, his active brain ! 
He must stand and see Destiny work out for 
him the immitigable evil, without so much as 
offering resistance. What can you do when 


346 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


death falls upon your dearest one? Nothing. 
What can you do when calamity sweeps away 
your fortune ? Nothing. What can you do 
when the tongue of slander and the accidental 
conjunction of circumstances ruin your char- 
acter ? Nothing. What can you do when she 
whom you love more than life, or fortune, or 
character, turns away her face and loves another ? 
Nothing. Oh, yes ! says the philosopher, — 
taking his pipe or his cigar from his lips, — 
oh, yes! you can do something. You can rise 
superior to Fate. You can fling sorrow and 
despair to the winds. You can take up a new 
thread of life. You can shake off your gloom, 
and go where the sun shines, — you can do 
whatever you will to do. Shake off this pas- 
sion ? Shake off this strange despair, — this 
aching regret? How? You cannot quit smok- 
ing, oh vain boaster! You cling to your cigar, 
or your pipe, knowing that you are being slowly 
but surely poisoned to death ; and yet you say, 
“ It is preposterous for a great strong man to 
be overcome by his love for a girl ! ” You toss 
aside the silly story of a consuming passion, 
and relight the stub of a half-burned maduro 


THE SILVER BELL. 


347 


You have never seen your Lucie La Rue. You 
have never stood on the shadowy line, between 
light and darkness, listening for the tinkle of 
the old sweet marriage-bell. You have never 
felt the cool dew gather on your face in the soft 
Southern night, as the wind palpitated in the 
old trees, and the mocking-birds stirred tune- 
fully in their slumbers ; nor the weight of the 
whole far-spreading night settle down upon 
your heart, as a sudden silence, falling on the 
gay guests within the mansion of your love, 
announced the beginning of the sweet and 
bitter ceremony which locked her away from 
you forever. 

Once Cauthorne chanced to glance up at a 
window : it was Willard’s favorite window, and 
there, framed for an instant like the picture 
of some heavenly spirit, robed in white, veil- 
covered, crowned with orange-flowers, stood 
Lucie. The magnolia-bough, yielding to the 
wind -current, passed a spray across her, like a 
cloud across the southern moon. And then 
she vanished. 

The old-time colored folk of the household 
came from their dilapidated quarters, and .stood 


348 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


where they could see into the house through 
the wide-open windows and doors. 

Cauthorne heard Auntie Liza’s voice. She 
was saying that “De ceremony’s ’bout ter 
begin. Keep yo’sel’s quiet, now, chillen, an’ 
lissen.” They all stood like black statues cut 
out of night itself. “ Dar dey is ! dar dey is,” 
whispered the old woman. “ Bress de sweet 
chile’s soul ! Don’t she look bootiful ! An’ 
Mars’ Vance too, Lor’ bress ’m, Lor’ bress ’m ! ” 

Cauthorne looked, staggered, turned away, 
and would have left the place, but he was too 
weak. A little way in the wood he sat down 
at the root of a tree. Being removed to even 
this distance seemed to give him a calmer 
view. He drew in a great breath, and began 
to exert his strong will. 

How long he had been there he could not 
have guessed, but he had heard the rustle and 
stir after the ceremony was over and the 
sweet silver bell had ceased its ringing; a 
long period of confused noises like murmur 
ings and whisperings of happy people had fol- 
lowed this, and then there was joyful music, 
and the rhythmic beat of the dancers. 


THE SILVER TELL. 


349 


“Mr. Cauthorne,” said the well-remembered, 
subdued voice of Victor La Rue, close beside 
him. He looked up and saw the outlines of 
the cripple leaning on his crutches. “I have 
been hunting for you everywhere/’ he con- 
tinued. “ Lucie said she saw you, but I could 
hardly believe it ; I thought it probable that 
she had imagined it. I am glad you did not 
go in. It is best as it is. It could do no good.” 

Cauthorne vaguely wondered how Victor had 
got his knowledge, but he was still too over- 
whelmed to speak. Slowly and painfully the 
crippled man eased himself down until he sat 
upon the ground close by Cauthorne. 

The music swelled higher and joyfuller ; the 
feet of the dancers beat to quicker time. 

“ I know it is terrible,” said Victor : “ I 
know what it is to have one’s life crushed at a 
single blow. But I have borne it ; and you must 
bear it, sir, like a man and a Christian.” 

In a second Cauthorne was aflame with 
anger. He sprang to his feet and glared 
through the gloom at his companion. 

“ What are you here for ? ” he cried, his 
voice shaking hoarsely : “ what do you come 


350 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


into my way for? What do I care for yout 
troubles, or your advice ? Is there no way of 
escaping you? Do you mean to always come 
shaking your hurt hand and your maimed leg 
in my face?” 

Victor was speechless with astonishment ; 
and before he could recover himself Cauthorne 
had strode away into the shadowy boscage, 
leaving behind him the sting of his terrible 
words. But he came back in a minute or 
two, and put his hand upon the soldier’s 
drooping head. • 

“ Forgive my hot humor ” he said; “forgive 
me as I forgive those who trespass against: 
me. I am not myself to-night. It will all be 
right. You forgive me?” 

“ I love you,” said Victor, grasping his 
hand and clinging to it tremulously: “there 
is nothing to forgive, sir.” 

“And here all ends,” said Cauthorne, re- 
turning the pressure of the soldier’s hand, and 
bending over him. “Here all ends. Good- 
by.” 

Victor heard his heavy footsteps, and knew 
that he was gone forever. 


THE SILVER BELL. 


351 


“ Good-by, Lucie,” he heard him murmur; 
and then the music and the dancing and the 
sough of the night-wind overwhelmed every 
other sound. 

The reader will remember a picture which 
ca/used such a stir in Parisian art-circles last 
season. It was called “A Vision of Florida,” 
and was done in the highest and most com- 
mendable style of the impressionist * school. 
It was a young girl, dark-eyed, black-haired, 
brown-faced, lithe, innocent, clothed in white 
and dull scarlet, sitting on a rustic seat under 
a huge, moss-hung, live-oak tree. In the back- 
ground there was a glimpse of an old gray 
mansion with a decaying veranda and a many- 
gabled roof. A mysterious charm hung about 
the picture, defying criticism and captivating 
the imagination. One tried in vain to analyze 
the feeling which crept over him as he con- 
templated that sweet, happy, half-languid, half- 
insistant face. It was somewhat the face of a 
beautiful child just aroused from gentle sleep 
and wonderful dreams. It half lingered with 
recollections of those dreams, it half inquired 


352 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


about the present and the promise of the mor- 
row. Such a face will haunt one, such a form 
will stay in one’s memory and rob one of 
rest. 

Lawrence Cauthorne chanced to come upon 
this picture at the exhibition, and at once — 
struck numb with a bolt of sorrow he had 
fancied dead — stood breathless before it. It 
was as if he stood on the lawn at La Rue place, 
with Lucie sitting in the old favorite seat be- 
fore him. The feeling came and passed, like a 
hot, hurtful waft from some malarious place ; 
and then he carefully examined the canvas, as 
one who is coldly critical. It was the work, as 
the reader already knows, of Herman Willard, 
jun. It has made him famous. 

Cauthorne and Willard seldom meet now : 
they have, by a tacit consent, drifted away from 
each other. 

Once they had a little talk in which they 
mutually confessed the foolishness of nursing 
the Tallahassee memory. 

“We really missed getting inside of that 
strange little world, after all," said Willard, toy- 
ing with a cigarette. 


THE SILVER BELL. 


353 


“I got too far in for my peace of mind, I 
fear,” replied Cauthorne. 

“ Why should it affect one’s peace of mind ? ” 
demanded Willard. “We dropped in there like 
strange beings from another planet. She looked 
curiously and inquiringly at us ; she enjoyed 
us as somewhat new and interesting; but she 
loved Vance before she ever saw us, and she 
was, like a true, sweet woman the world over, 
faithful and loyal to her lord. The thing has 
its touch of pathos, its .pang, its irony; but it 
also has the dewy freshness, and tenderness, 
and joyfulness of the old, old story. It ended 
in a happy marriage. What could be added ? 
Is it not a perfectly rounded poem ? ” 

“Your draught of philosophy is very clear 
and tempting,” said Cauthorne, smiling as one 
who would rather not, “ but one is not satisfied 
with it. It does not quench one’s thirst.” 

“ Oh, well ! I don’t know,” added Willard : “ I 
find much consolation in such philosophy. I 
am” — 

“A sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal,” 
interrupted Cauthorne. 

“ Perhaps you are right,” Willard responded. 


354 


A TALLAHASSEE GIRL. 


“ In my dreams I often hear those magnolia 
sprays rustling across the window of the old 
room at the La Rue place, and life seems a 
little hollow bubble when I wake.” 

“ There is one consolation,” said Cauthorne, 
more in soliloquy than addressed to his com- 
panion. “ She is happy. Whenever I contem- 
plate what a horror it would have been if our 
going there had involved her in sorrow, I thank 
Heaven fervently that her sweet life is rounded 
into the ripeness of love.” 

“You said just a moment ago that my phi- 
losophy is insipid, now you regale yourself with 
it,” said Willard half laughing. 

“ It is tasteless and unsatisfactory,” exclaimed 
Cauthorne, “but you know, it might have been 
bitter, burning, deadly, to her as well as to me.” 

“ And to me,” added Willard. 

They looked at each other. Their eyes were 
full of visions ; their ears were full of tender 
sounds. 

“ Let us drop this subject forever,” said Cau 
thorne, going to a window and leaning out so 
that the breeze from the blue sea below might 
fan him. 


/ 


TI 1 E SILVER BELL. 355 

“ It would be well,” assented Willard. 

The day was scarcely begun, but the brisk 
breath had blown away the mists. The white- 
capped waves rolled free and far. Some sails 
were in sight, slanting down the wind, and 
some white gulls, far out, kept flickering farther 
and farther, like those that Edgar Fawcett saw 

• “ Gleam as a blossom’s petals 

Blown through the spacious morn.” 


THE END. 



























































































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